Enchanted Garden Maurice Ravel / Arr. James Thornton

from the Mother Goose Suite

Maurice Ravel wrote the Mother Goose Suite in 1908. It was composed while he was on vacation at La Grangette at Valvins. While there, he spent time playing with the children there, and he wrote a four-hands piano piece for his host's children. The next day, publisher Jacques Durand visited Ravel there, and he asked the children to play the piece he had written for them the previous day. The performance intrigued Durand so much that he made Ravel promise to do something with this idea. The result was Ma Mère l'oye, (Mother Goose Suite) a set of four pieces for piano four hands. The final piece in this group is Le jardin féerique (The Enchanted Garden).