M. Ravel: Alborada del Gracioso - Miroirs (Vinnitskaya) video free download

The russian pianist Anna VInnitskaya (winner of the Queen Elisaveth Competition 2007) performs Maurice Ravel's 4th Miroir "Alborada del Gracioso".

The title Alborada del gracioso is usually translated as "Morning Song of a Jester," the gracioso having been the household jester in the classic Spanish comedies of Calderón and Lope de Vega. The piece has remained enormously popular on its own, in both the original keyboard version and the subsequent one for orchestra. Ravel's pupil, confidant and biographer Alexis Roland-Manuel characterized the piece as one "in which the dry and biting virtuosity is contrasted, Spanish-wise, with the swooning flow of the lovelorn melodic line which interrupts the angry buzzing of guitars."

Until 1905, the year in which he completed both the Miroirs and the Sonatine, Ravel's output for piano solo had consisted entirely of brief individual pieces. Roland-Manuel observed that the five pieces that constitute the Miroirs announced a "completely new style" for Ravel, and that they seemed for a long time as difficult to understand as they are to play. Ravel did not orchestrate the entire suite, but as early as 1906, just after the suite's premiere, he orchestrated its third section, Une Barque sur l'océan, and Gabriel Pierné conducted it in a concert of the Colonne Orchestra on February 3, 1907. Since Ravel's time, the remaining parts of the Miroirs have been orchestrated by such musicians as Percy Grainger, Ernesto Halffter, Felix Guenter and Michael Round.

In the piano suite, each of the five movements bears a dedication to one of Ravel's friends and/or colleagues. The Alborada was dedicated to M.D. Calvocoressi, the critic and musical scholar who was among Ravel's earliest supporters, encouraged his very productive interest in the music of Mussorgsky, and supplied him with the texts for the Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques.

Source: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=3050