Ma mère l'oye Suite

Who other than Ravel can bring the enchanted world of fairytales so vividly to life, and with quite such a potent sense of dark magic and bittersweet nostalgia? The French composer wrote the original 1908 piano-duet version of the Ma mère l'Oye suite for his two favourite children, Mimie and Jean—the daughter and son of Polish émigré friends Cipa and Ida Godebski—and orchestrated it soon after its successful premiere, first for the concert hall, then, with added sections, as a ballet. In its most popular form, the orchestral suite, Ravel shows us his mastery of instrumental colour, whether in the dreamy “Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant” (“Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty”) or the tentative journeying of “Petit Poucet” (“Tom Thumb”), who loses his way in the forest after his trail of breadcrumbs is devoured by birds. Inspired by Ravel’s visit to the Paris Exposition in 1889, where he encountered Javanese gamelan music, ”Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes” (“Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas”) is imbued with his interpretation of Far Eastern sounds. There are hints of Satie’s Gymnopédies in the exquisitely crafted narrative of “Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête” (“Conversations of Beauty and the Beast”); while the final section, “Le jardin féerique” (“The Fairy Garden”), in which the prince awakens the Sleeping Beauty, is filled with nostalgic longing for the childhood that Ravel, in his mid-30s, had left behind.