The first page of Maurice Ravel’s “Sémiramis” manuscript. Photo courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
In Wednesday’s (3/12) New York Times, Javier C. Hernández writes, “The conductor Gustavo Dudamel has premiered dozens of pieces in his career. But the score that he was giddily studying on a recent afternoon at Lincoln Center was different: a nearly 125-year-old piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel that had only recently surfaced in a Paris library…. On Thursday, Dudamel and the Philharmonic will give the world premiere of the five-minute piece as part of a program celebrating the 150th birthday of Ravel … The newly found piece, ‘Sémiramis: Prélude et Danse,’ was written sometime between 1900 and 1902, when Ravel was in his late 20s and sparring with administrators at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. The work, from an unfinished cantata about the Babylonian queen Semiramis, reveals a young musician still honing his voice … The manuscript, more than 40 pages long, includes an aria for tenor and orchestra that the Philharmonic will not perform; the Orchestre de Paris will premiere that section, alongside the prelude and dance, in December … ‘Sémiramis’ is a coup for the New York Philharmonic … It is rare to uncover unpublished works by major composers, and Ravel, who died in 1937 at 62, wrote only about 80 pieces in his life.”
