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- Ondine: Maurice Ravel.
-
- Maurice Ravel composed this piece in 1908. It is the first in a set of
- three from Gaspard De La Nuit. Ravel was inspired by prose and poems
- by Aloysius Bertrand. Ondine is a water nymph, and the music describes
- waterfalls, rock pools, fountains etc. It is a tone poem, similar to
- others Ravel wrote including Daphnis and Chloe. The other two pieces
- (which I may record later) are Le Gibet (which describes a gallows
- outside a town at sunset) and Scarbo (which describes a dwarf, half
- gargoyle, half ghost). I think Ondine is one of the most gorgeous piano
- pieces ever written.
-
- I recorded this using a Yamaha Clavinova, a sequencing program and
- a 386 PC. It should be played on similar equipment with a fair amount
- of reverberation.
-
- I played about 95% of the notes and used the mouse to put in the
- rest, to correct tempos, wrong notes, and to adjust the melodic line
- and harmony. I tried to play this as closely to the score as possible.
- It is extremely difficult, not only to play the correct notes, but to
- bring out the subtle shades of tone in this piece, particularly on a
- Clavinova which does not have quite the same resonance and long decay
- time of sustained notes as in an acoustic grand piano.
-
- I hope you enjoy this wonderful music.
-
- Robert Finley. March 5th 1995.
- ROBERTFINLEY@delphi.com
-