Maurice Ravel

Le Tombeau de Couperin: Toccata

Le Tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917. The piece is in six movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer who had died fighting in World War I. Ravel also produced an orchestral version of the work in 1919, although this omitted the Fugue and Toccata movements. Pianist Michael Round created this orchestration, which was recorded by Vladimir Ashkenazy (Exton, 2003). This edition omits percussion parts so as to exactly match the orchestration of Ravel's scoring of the rest of the suite, but these parts are available separately, directly from the orchestrator. Instrumentation: 2.2(2d.EH).2.2: 2.1.0.0: Hp: Str (9-8-7-6-5 in set). Round's orchestration of both the Fugue and Toccata in Ravel's original instrumentation, as well as Ravel's orchestration of the original four movements (Clinton Nieweg edition) are available from the publisher.