Le tombeau de Couperin 

I always look forward to performing Ravel’s piano suite Le tombeau de Couperin, his tribute to the style of piano composition popularized by the venerable composer Francois Couperin. Originally composed for solo piano between 1914 and 1917, each of it’s six movements is a memorial (‘le tombeau’ ), dedicated to the memory of friends and two brothers who died in World War I.

That Ravel chose to model his work on the Baroque dance suite is not completely surprising. His interest in dance forms was extensive, and he’d already enjoyed success writing ballets and restylizing the pavane, rigaudon, passacaglia, minuet and waltz as concert music. His Menuet was composed in 1895 and the Pavane 1899. The idea of the single movement La valse, his symphonic “tribute to the genius of Johann Strauss” was conceived in 1906. Three ballets – Ma mere l’Oye, Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs and Daphnis et Cloe – were premiered in 1912. 

Since it had been Ravel’s custom to create orchestral arrangements of his piano music, he did so for all but two of the movements of Le tombeau de Couperin in 1919. A ballet was performed to them at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in 1920. Indeed, Le tombeau became the most substantial of his wartime works.

Have a listen to the orchestral version of Le tombeau de Couperin. I love this video:

As you see, the Fugue and the Toccata were not orchestrated by Ravel. However, enterprising composers have created their own transcriptions of these masterpieces. This version of the Fugue featuring the oboe is simply melancholic loveliness:

The Toccata was orchestrated by none other than Zoltan Kocsis, the great Hungarian pianist and conductor. I would imagine that Ravel would have been pleased with this rendition:

This season I had the opportunity to perform the work both as a piano suite and in it’s orchestral setting. Have a listen and let me know what you think of these alternative arrangements of Ravel’s beautiful work!