Le Tombeau
de Ravel.

An orchestration by Anthony Girard.

Composing a Tombeau de Ravel in 2025 means inscribing oneself within a double lineage: that of the Baroque Tombeaux, and that of the Tombeau de Couperin which Ravel himself dedicates to his French model. Here Anthony Girard takes a singular stance: what he offers is not an original composition, but an orchestration — echoing Ravel's taste for an art in which he excelled, whether for his own works or those of Schumann, Chabrier, Mussorgsky or Debussy.

The chosen piece is the Forlane by François Couperin — the very one that served as Ravel's model for the Forlane of the Tombeau de Couperin. The starting point is precisely the piano transcription of this Forlane made by Ravel, rediscovered by François Dru at the heart of the Ravel Edition project. Girard thus starts from Ravel reading Couperin, and orchestrates that reading — not in Couperin's style, nor in Ravel's, but midway between the two, scrupulously respecting the instrumentation of the Tombeau de Couperin.

I thus pay a double homage, to Ravel and to his model. Through the brevity of the piece and its simplicity, a certain form of modesty is favoured, which also pays homage, it seems to me, to these two composers. — Anthony Girard, interview XXI Music / Crescendo

The piece closes on a coda of Girard's own invention, in which one perceives fragments of the initial theme of Ravel's Forlane — a wink to those familiar with the Tombeau de Couperin, who will enjoy identifying them.

The orchestration stems from a rigour inherited from sixteen years of teaching at the CNSMDP and the CRR de Paris, where Ravel held a central place. Anthony Girard has already signed several orchestrations of Ravel — the Histoires naturelles, the posthumous Sonata (titled Ballade, for cello and orchestra), the Chansons madécasses — with others to come. Le Tombeau de Ravel is part of this ongoing dialogue with Ravel's orchestral thought.