LDV109

25 PHILIPPE BIANCONI Valses nobles et sentimentales , Miroirs , Gaspard de la nuit . . . Are there several Ravels, in your opinion? Yes and no. There’s an extraordinary unity to his oeuvre. Ravel found himself very early on, almost immediately, despite the initial influence of Chabrier. His signature is there from the start and places its seal on his entire output. And yet there is a world of difference between Gaspard de la nuit and Le Tombeau de Couperin or the Sonatine – in terms of pianistic resources, of style, of aesthetics. Some composers give the impression of following a trajectory, driven by an urge to go ever further in the development of their language. Debussy is one of those. Ravel, on the other hand, explores diverse aims, sometimes distant from each other. He doesn’t repeat himself, nor does he dig deeper. He moves on to something else, changes the subject, the perspective, sometimes the lighting too, but he keeps his own grammar. After the landscapes of Miroirs , he moved on to literary inspiration with Gaspard de la nuit , while his gaze turned to old-fashioned forms and eighteenth-century France with Le Tombeau de Couperin and the Menuets .