Maurice Ravel/Marius Constant - Gaspard de la nuit

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) / Marius Constant (1925 - 2004) - Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55 (1908, orch. 1990) I. Ondine [0:00] II. Le gibet [6:46] III. Scarbo [11:58] Duisburger Philharmonic Orchestra, Jonathan Darlington (2007) Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55 is a suite for solo piano typically lasting around 22 minutes. Marius Constant, primarily known today for writing the theme for The Twilight Zone, ambitiously orchestrated the work in 1990. The orchestration is scored for large orchestra with an instrumentation similar to Ravel’s in Daphnis et Chloe. “Ravel’s inspiration to write Gaspard de la nuit derived from vivid and macabre poems by the French Romantic poet Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841), to whose work Ravel was introduced by the pianist Ricardo Viñes, a fellow pupil at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1908 Ravel set three poems from Bertrand’s eponymous collection, written in 1830. Viñes gave the first performance on January 9, 1909. Each p