Ravel's Gaspard De La Nuit

Pianists—those with the technique to handle this work—should take advantage of the availability of not one but two recent critical editions of one of Ravel's major works for piano. Although the original publication (Durand, 1909), now in the public domain, has been reprinted many times and is available for download widely on the Internet, the density of the critical notes in both the Henle and Wiener Urtext editions should warn performers of the many problems in this complex work (in complex notation), which unfortunately were quite common in Durand publications, even in much less complex works. Several other critical or urtext editions have also appeared over the years, the most prominent by the justifiably notable Ravel scholar Roger Nichols (Peters Edition, ED 7378 [1991]), and another by Gaby Casadesus (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics, vol. 1964 [1990]), the pianist-wife of Robert Casadesus, friends of the composer and performers of his music during his lifetime. All of these editions provide the texts of the three poems that inspired the three movements of the work. Schirmer's Casadesus edition has a very brief introduction (by Casadesus?) and no critical notes, but five footnotes in the score provide some specific performance guidelines and, according to the title page, editorial fingering.

The Peters and Schirmer editions are significant because their editors are as known to the scholarly community as they might well be to knowledgeable pianists with the confident technique to be interested in performing this difficult work. Among the contributors to these four critical editions, however, only Gaby Casadesus and Peter Roggenkamp seem to actually be pianists: Gaby was well known in her day as a performer in her own right, as well as in duo with her husband Robert; Peter Roggenkamp has released several recordings of contemporary piano music (although not as far as I can find Gaspard de la nuit) on various compact-disc labels. For the Wiener Urtext publication Roggenkamp supplied the "Fingerings and Notes on Interpretation." The actual editing of the music from the sources has been left for the most part to musicologists and in-house editors rather than performers. I mean nothing derogatory at all by using the words "in-house editors." Students and teachers hold both Henle and Wiener Urtext publications in high regard, while the abundant experience in making editorial decisions these unsung heroes have acquired over the years, as well as the knowledge of the music under their jurisdiction that these editions customarily display, have earned their work a place in the musical literature and (invisibly) in the concert hall. In sum, we have here four excellent but varied takes on one of the major works for piano solo from the twentieth century—a plethora of riches. Performers specializing in Ravel and most libraries of any size would do well to own or consult all of these.

A bit of trivia to close: The music in the two newer editions under review are laid out in the same way: each page throughout both publications have the same bars of music distributed on the page exactly alike. Roger Nichols's Peter's edition exactly matches the layout in the original Durand publication, while the layout in the Schirmer edition is unique among these four. To my eye—a sub-par pianist who might play...