I have decided to post Gaspard de la nuit. I first posted this in 2020 with Marcelle Meyer playing. I have heard another performance by the young British pianist, who is a virtuoso. Gaspard de la nuit is one of hardest pieces in the piano repertory. Benjamin Grosvenor is an acclaimed British concert pianist. He first gained widespread fame at age 11 as the youngest-ever winner of the keyboard division in the 2004 BBC Young Musician
I have also posted a lecture by Bruce Adolphe, who is a composer and who is also the director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The lecture is very interesting, if you have the time or the inclination.
Gaspard de la nuit
When pianists think of Gaspard de la nuit (“gaspard” comes from an old Persian word meaning “treasurer”), their hearts stop. Ravel’s masterpiece, as famous for its depiction of Aloysius Bertrand’s poems as it is infamous for stunning virtuosity, is like a realistic dream, a lucid world of darkness and terror evoked through refinement and detail. Ravel brings to life Bertrand’s poems using a new and forward-looking technique, a classical form, and a vast knowledge of keyboard composition to convey the likes of mermaids, monsters and corpses. Though daring technical devices and harmonies were an integral part of Ravel’s realization of the poems, the sheer technical accomplishment of the work is in itself an outstanding feat. The music extends the capabilities of the ten-fingered, two-handed pianist, and in the process makes Gaspard de la nuit one of the most challenging and virtuosic compositions ever written. Yet, for all of its remarkable innovations, Gaspard de la nuit is confined to a strict, classical structure that is in many ways like a conventional sonata: an opening movement of moderate speed, a central slow movement, and a fast, impressive finale. However, this exacting approach to compositional form did not hamper Ravel’s realization of the poetry; in fact, it was with a classical form that Ravel could follow Bertrand’s work like a blueprint, thematically reconstructing every dancing demon and burst of water. Ravel was a master of using the piano– everything from scales and arpeggios to rhythms and articulations unique to the instrument– to create specific objects and emotions. Detailed, almost tangible images make Gaspard de la nuit unforgettable, defining its im- mortality as a masterpiece which is both a brilliant and ground-breaking technical study, and a hauntingly evocative musical recreation of Bertrand’s poetry.
Lecture on Gaspard de la Nuit
Benjamin Grosvenor
Born – July 8, 1992, in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex
Grosvenor first came to prominence as the outstanding winner of the Keyboard Final of the 2004 BBC Young Musician Competition at the age of eleven, and he was invited to perform with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the First Night of the 2011 BBC Proms aged just nineteen. A pianist of widespread international acclaim, he was announced Artist-in-Residence at Radio France for the 2020–21 season, in which he holds the same title also with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, he became the inaugural recipient of The Ronnie and Lawrence Ackman Classical Piano Prize with the New York Philharmonic.
In 2011 Benjamin signed to Decca Classics, becoming the youngest British musician ever, and the first British pianist in almost 60 years, to sign to the label. His most recent CD on the label, his second concerto recording, features Frédéric Chopin’s piano concertos, recorded with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of Elim Chan. Named Recording of the Month by Gramophone, the disc was also awarded a Diapason d’Or, with Diapason’s critic declaring that the recording is “a version to rank among the best, and confirmation of an extraordinary artist.”
The youngest of five brothers, Grosvenor began playing the piano aged 6. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Daniel-Ben Pienaar, where he graduated in 2012 with the ‘Queen’s Commendation for Excellence’ and in 2016 was awarded a Fellowship from the institution.
Bruce Adolphe
Known to millions of Americans as the Piano Puzzler on American Public Media’s Performance Today, which was broadcast weekly from 2002 to 2025, Adolphe is also the resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The author of several books on music, he has been composer-in-residence and visiting scholar at the Brain and Creativity Institute in LA, Visiting Lecturer in the residential colleges at Yale, a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at Mannes College of Music, and on the faculties of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Juilliard.