Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Maurice Ravel

Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose)

 

Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose) was originally composed in 1908 in a four-hand piano version and later orchestrated and transformed into a ballet and then into an orchestral suite. In this work, Maurice Ravel devoted his attention to childhood. In fact, the work was meant to pay tribute to the great French fable-writers of past centuries, such as Madame d’Aulnay, Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and, above all, Charles Perrault, the author of the the Contes de ma mere l’oye (Tales of Mother Goose) that were first published in 1697 and from which the composition takes its title. The work is simply a suite made up of five pieces, each of which was inspired by a different, well-known fable by one of the above-mentioned authors. A work of exceptional mastery with respect to timbre and color, and full of brilliant narrative passages, Ma mere l’oye ably conceals the complexity of its structure behind a joyously simple manner in which childhood fantasies seem to become real, in the form of bright, parti-colored phantasmagoria.

listen to Real Media recording

1. Pavane de la Belle et de la Bête
2. Petit Poucet
3. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes
4. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête
5. Le jardin féerique

Performers

Performance