RAVEL Le Tombeau de Couperin
Prélude
Forlane
Menuet
Rigaudon
(arr. Paul Dean) oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano
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During service as a hospital volunteer in the First World War Ravel began to compose a French Suite for solo piano, written not on patriotic themes, but simply as a collection of French-inspired dances. He never finished the work but two years later in the summer of 1917 while on a visit to Normandy to restore his failing health and to recover from the loss of his mother, he returned to the French Suite. In honor of the fallen soldiers he had cared for, he called it Le Tombeau de Couperin (literally, Couperin's Tomb) after François Couperin, a 17th-century composer whom Ravel chose to represent the French nation.

Ravel made orchestrations to four of the movements before the original piano version even received its first performance (the same four movements as you will hear in this arrangement). Paul Dean took the piano score as the basis of the arrangement but basically perceived it as a step between the piano version and the orchestral versions.

Had Maurice Ravel himself orchestrated his dance suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin, for piano and wind quartet, I don’t know that he would come up with anything much better than the arrangement for that combination by Paul Dean.
Courier–Mail May 10 2003


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