The original four-handed piano version was composed by Ravel between 1908 and 1910, telling stories inspired by Charles Perrault’s fairy tale collection Tales of Mother Goose. Sleeping Beauty, Little Thumb, the Empress of the Pagodas and Beauty and the Beast are the fairy tale characters behind the individual parts of Ma Mère l‘Oye concluded by
a grand finale in the Garden of the Fairies.
In 2016 Ars Electronica coproduced with Abu Dhabi Festival and LA-Phil a large-scale visualization for the orchestra version of Ma Mère l‘Oye. The work premiered in February 2016 at the Walt Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles, conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen, with the LA Philharmonic. Due to the very big sonic differences of the piano compared with the full orchestra but also because of the differences in interpretation, a completely new set of visualizations has been created for the performance with Dennis Russell Davies & Maki Namekawa.
Credits: The visualizations for Piano Phase and Ma Mère l’Oye are commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Music Festival and co-produced with Ars Electronica Futurelab.
