Ravel: Mother Goose Suite
Given his exceptionally imaginative and sensitive musical language, it makes sense that Ravel harbored a sort of wide-eyed empathy for children; he was even known to retreat to the nursery to play on the floor with children when bored at adult parties. Although he eventually orchestrated the piece and augmented it for a ballet adaptation, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite began as a four-hand piano duet for Mimi and Jean Godebski, ages six and seven. Each of the five movements invokes a different fairy tale by such French authors as Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy and Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, and the suite borrows its title from the colloquial name for one of Perrault’s collections of fables, “Mother Goose.” Ravel’s sparing but characterful piano writing bespeaks a musical scope that reflects the delicate innocence of childhood; these brief vignettes flirt curiously with fantasy, but their time runs out just before anything too serious can happen.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Given his exceptionally imaginative and sensitive musical language, it makes sense that Ravel harbored a sort of wide-eyed empathy for children; he was even known to retreat to the nursery to play on the floor with children when bored at adult parties. Although he eventually orchestrated the piece and augmented it for a ballet adaptation, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite began as a four-hand piano duet for Mimi and Jean Godebski, ages six and seven. Each of the five movements invokes a different fairy tale by such French authors as Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy and Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, and the suite borrows its title from the colloquial name for one of Perrault’s collections of fables, “Mother Goose.” Ravel’s sparing but characterful piano writing bespeaks a musical scope that reflects the delicate innocence of childhood; these brief vignettes flirt curiously with fantasy, but their time runs out just before anything too serious can happen.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival