Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose Suite)

Ravel's Mother Goose Suite began as a set of five piano duets (1908–10) for the children of his friends, then was orchestrated and expanded into a ballet (1912). The orchestral version reveals Ravel's supreme mastery of orchestral colour: each of the five fairy-tale scenes — Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Laideronnette the Empress of the Pagodas, Beauty and the Beast, and The Fairy Garden — deploys a unique orchestral palette. The use of pentatonic scales in the Pagodas movement, the contrabassoon as the Beast, and the shimmering closing garden are Ravel at his most magical. One of the most enchanting orchestral scores in the entire repertoire.