thumb|upright|Ravel in 1907

Miroirs (, ) is a five-movement suite for solo piano written by French composer Maurice Ravel between 1904 and 1905. First performed by Ricardo Viñes in 1906, Miroirs contains five movements, each dedicated to a fellow member of the French avant-garde artist group Les Apaches.

History

Around 1900, Maurice Ravel joined a group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians referred to as Les Apaches or "hooligans", a term coined by Ricardo Viñes to refer to his band of "artistic outcasts". To pay tribute to his fellow artists, Ravel began composing Miroirs in 1904 and finished it the following year. It was first published by Eugène Demets in 1906. The third and fourth movements were subsequently orchestrated by Ravel, while the fifth was orchestrated by Percy Grainger, among others.

Structure

Miroirs has five movements, each dedicated to a member of Les Apaches:

Colin Matthews was commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015 to orchestrate Oiseaux Tristes for first performance at the BBC Proms conducted by Nicholas Collon. This was followed by La Vallée des Cloches in 2017, performed by the same orchestra together with Oiseaux Tristes and Steven Stucky’s orchestration of Noctuelles.

See also

  • List of compositions by Maurice Ravel

References

  • Recording of Miroirs, performed by Thérèse Dussaut, in MP3 format:
  • "Noctuelles"
  • "Oiseaux tristes"
  • "Une barque sur l'océan"
  • "Alborada del gracioso"
  • "La vallée des cloches"
  • Recording of Miroirs, performed by Felipe Sarro: Archive.org