Norfolk Symphony Orchestra

Ravel wrote his Pavane for a Dead Princess for the piano in 1899 when he was a student at the Paris Conservatoire. It was an immediate success giving him, according to a contemporary, “the esteem of the salons and the admiration of young ladies who did not play the piano very well.” Ravel's exquisite orchestration, completed in 1910, adds an extra dimension of sensibility, raising the music far above the level of a salon piece. It is revealing that Ravel stated that the Pavane “is not a funeral lament for a dead child, but rather an evocation of the pavane that might have been danced by such a little princess as painted by Velásquez.” Misunderstanding of Ravel's poetic title has led to some idiosyncratic performances: Ravel attended one, informing the pianist afterwards that his piece was called Pavane for a Dead Princess, not Dead Pavane for a Princess. Perhaps a more sympathetic title would be “Pavane for a Bygone Princess.”