The ‘Cinq pieces enfantines’ that make up Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose Suite’ illustrate moments from fairy tale narratives. Apart from the last (The Fairy Garden), each is subtitled with a line or two from the text of a story. Three of these are well known stories: Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, and Beauty and the Beast (all from Perrault). The third, ‘Pagodes et Pagodines’ is based on a less familiar tale, ‘The Green Serpent’, by Mme d’Anglebert.
Despite their narrative origins, performances of Ravel’s suite have not before been combined with narrations of the tales themselves. For a concert pairing with Poulenc’s (narrated) Babar the Elephant, I wrote a narration for the Ravel pieces (peformed in a piano solo version by Jaques Charlot) which uses abridged versions of the stories to introduce and set off the music, ending with the narrator walking off to the magical music of the Fairy Garden. Listen to an extract here: Ravel, ‘Waltz of Beauty and the Beast’.