This weekend there are lots of events on radio and TV commemorating the birth date of Maurice Ravel, March 7th 1875. BBC Radio 3 had dedicated a full day of broadcasting to his music in their ‘Ravel Day’.

So all day I’ve been hearing versions of Boléro, his most famous piece of music, though a piece he wasn’t particularly fond of himself. He called it ‘a piece for orchestra without music’.

He never wrote any music for guitar, only for piano, orchestra, strings and voice but I’ve been looking for arrangements of his music for guitar. There aren’t many but I’ve come across this really amazing arrangement of the Prelude from ‘Le Tombuau de Couperin’. It’s amazing listening here to the Henderson-Kolk Guitar Duo that this piece wasn’t written for guitar. The tone of the instruments suits the music perfectly here.