Pantomime

The ballet Daphnis et Chloe by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) exists in two original instrumentations, one for piano alone (1910), the other for large orchestra with choir (1912). From the ballet Ravel extracted the two suites for orchestra (1911-1931), of which the second one with well-known flute solo enjoys great popularity. Moreover, in Paris in 1912 Durand published a collection of three Fragments symphoniques from the ballet for piano alone. On the contrary to the suites for orchestra, where the single portions smoothly merge, these three fragments are not joined up and stand side by side. The third fragment is entitled as Scène de Daphnis et Chloe and contains the great flute solo.

The original version for piano has served as a basis for the present arrangement. Ravel's demanding, but nevertheless very pianistic writing was simplified in some places by extracting a flute part from it. The difficult question, where to start and end such an arrangement, was luckily answered in the fragment by the composer himself.