3 movements from Mother Goose Suite

Little Ugly, Empress of the Pagodas

Conversations of Beauty and the Beast

The Enchanted Garden

Perhaps because he never quite grew up himself, Ravel had an uncanny knack of entering the world of children through his music. The original version of his Mother Goose Suite is particularly inspired in that it tells its fairy tales in picturesque detail through means as simple as a piano duet for two young children. The composer’s own orchestral arrangement is even more colourful, not least in Little Ugly, Empress of the Pagodas, where the grotesque little Empress’s court is vividly brought to life through the exotic music played by her tiny attendants on instruments fashioned from walnut and almond shells. Beauty and the Beast presents a touching little scene, Beauty characterised by a graceful waltz on clarinet, the Beast by a growling double bassoon. He can express himself more eloquently than that, however, and as she is persuaded to dance with him, bringing clarinet and double bassoon together, he is duly transformed. The rhapsodic Fairy Garden, which is based on no particular story, could almost be a hymn to their happiness ever after.