Description

Deux Mélodies Hébraïques by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was written in 1914 at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The first song Kaddish, here arranged for double bass and …piano by David Heyes, uses an Aramaic text from the Jewish prayer book. Both songs were first performed in June 1914 by Alvina Alvi, a soprano with the St Petersburg Opera who commissioned them, with the composer at the piano. Ravel orchestrated the songs in 1919-1920. The piano accompaniment is primarily chordal, contrasting a more rhapsodic and melismatic solo line, utilizing the lyrical and sonorous register of the double bass. Kaddish has been transcribed for many instrumental combinations and demonstrates the vibrant colours and timbres employed in the musical vocabulary of Maurice Ravel. This edition includes piano accompaniments for both solo and orchestral tunings.