§ Maurice Ravel — 1895-1897
Sites
auriculaires.
Orchestration of an early work for two pianos — 1895 / 1897
A new orchestration commissioned from Kenneth Hesketh for the Ravel Year 2025, co-commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic, the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse and the Festival Ravel.
World premiere
January 2025 — BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth
Orchestration
Kenneth Hesketh
Co-commission
BBC Philharmonic — Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse — Festival Ravel
Orchestrator's note
Two movements, two approaches
By Kenneth Hesketh — composer, orchestrator of Sites auriculaires
When the conductor Ludovic Morlot and Ravel Edition asked me to consider orchestrating Ravel's early work for two pianos, Sites auriculaires (1895/1897), I naturally accepted. With a deep appreciation for the composer's logical and technical approach to his profoundly sensual and colouristic art, I relished the challenge.
I began immediately with "Entre cloches" — the second of the two movements — and was enthused by the implications of the bell complexes that Ravel evokes, and which I sought to amplify in orchestral terms. As for the opening "Habanera", which Ravel wrote into his Rapsodie espagnole (1908), this movement posed many challenges, chiefly because an orchestration by the composer already existed, but also because of the myriad differences between the original version and the later orchestrated one.
My approach was to create a kind of gentle, oppositional or negative orchestration, in which I sought to oppose Ravel's original colour choices while retaining the composer's instrumental palette.
In working with Ravel's music, my admiration for it — and for the French tradition of which Ravel is both continuator and initiator — has only deepened, and I was reminded just how great the shadow of his work still is.
Portrait
Kenneth Hesketh
A widely recognised composer, Kenneth Hesketh has received numerous national and international commissions and has worked with a great many conductors: Sir Simon Rattle, Oliver Knussen, Vassily Sinaisky, Vasily Petrenko, Susanna Mälkki, Christoph-Mathias Mueller, John Wilson, Martyn Brabbins, Ludovic Morlot, Jac van Steen, Pascal Rophé.
As an orchestrator, his treatments of French music — Debussy, Boulanger, Ravel, Dutilleux — have been widely praised by critics. His versions of Dutilleux's Au gré des ondes, recorded by the Britten Sinfonia, and of the competition pieces for flute, oboe and bassoon performed by the Sinfonia of London, were singled out by BBC Music Magazine in 2022.
His orchestrations of the "Fugue" and "Toccata" from Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin have been recorded by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo, and by the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya conducted by Ludovic Morlot.
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