Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Ravel: music book

I have not ventured into Ravel territory yet (most of it is beyond my current abilities), but I do want to get started, and this book came up:

Maurice Ravel - Works for Piano (Les Editions Originales Durand: Salabert - Eschig)

Would that be a good choice, or are there compelling reasons to stay away from it?

That is a reproduction of the original engraving not a modern edition. You can find the same on imslp. The good side is that it is inexpensive.

Thanks! I should add that I like to follow along in the score while listening to professional recordings, so having it all together rather than as loose sheets is important to me.

Sure. Just dont expect top quality print. Also it is going to be a thick book which wont stay easily flat. But it is quite cheap.

All my Ravel scores are Durand, because when I bought them (decades ago), there were no alternatives.

The printing of the staves & notes is small (at least, for the ones I have: Gaspard de la nuit and concertos among them), not as properly black as it could be and quite difficult to read if you're using them to learn from. But if you're using the scores to follow the music along with while listening, they're OK. Fewer page turns at least.....

The one Ravel score (Jeux d'eau) I have from different publisher - Schott - is much clearer, with much larger printing. Each stave in the Durand (Gaspard) is slightly less than 6mm in width compared to 7mm in the Schott - quite a significant difference, especially if you're no longer in the first flush of youth and have to wear reading glasses........

BTW, 7mm seems to be the 'standard' width of printed scores for piano.

Thank you for that information, Sidokar and bennevis. It looks to me as if the reprinted Durand edition will serve well for "armchair playing" (i.e. listening/imagining), but maybe finding something else for actual playing would be a good idea. At any rate, my abilities point in the direction of "Ma mere l'oye", rather than Gaspard, so most of it will be listening only for some time to come.