Maurice Ravel: Music’s Peerless Painter in Sound

Although Ravel has long been celebrated as a dazzling orchestrator, labeling him thus tells only half the tale. His elegant manipulation of texture and timbre is incomparable, but he is also a conjurer of moods, painting in sound to sculpt emotional landscapes. Ravel’s music often feels almost cinematic in evoking sensual images, immersive worlds. (What would Hollywood film scores be without his sonic vocabulary?) And his influence on later composers is hard to overstate.
This composer’s crystalline craftsmanship, his control of harmony, rhythm and form, is also unparalleled and widely admired by contemporaries like Stravinsky, Debussy and Gershwin. His technical brilliance is always in service to his imaginative storytelling through sound. Ravel’s music breathes, shimmers, dances, dreams.

Please join our host Corrine as we explore the many moods, power and sheer beauty of this music.