Maurice Ravel

In last year’s Advent Calendar i featured an arrangement of one of Ravel’s piano works by Boulez; this year i’m exploring one by UK composer Colin Matthews. Ravel completed his five-movement piano suite Miroirs in 1905. He subsequently orchestrated two of the movements himself, Une barque sur l’océan and Alborada…

Today’s Advent Calendar work is another fascinating miniature oddity. Maurice Ravel composed Frontispice – his shortest work, consisting of just 15 bars – in June 1918. It was commissioned by the writer and poet Ricciotto Canudo, intended to act as a preface to Canudo’s S.P. 503, Le Poème du Vardar,…