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  5. I’ve always thought this song and the arrangement is rather creepy.
    IIRC, on some early vinyl pressings that cicada-like sound at the end went right to the run-out groove and was repeated until you lifted the needle off.

  9. A live version fails to give quite the oomph of the terrific studio version, which has a string arrangement by Robert Kirby (Nick Drake.)

    I like th laughter as he sings the first line, then the ensuing hush as they realise it isn’t a comedy caper……

  10. A while ago I started a playlist of spooky folk based music – you know the kind of thing that might have appeared in films like the Wicker Man. This is where it got to so if you have any further suggestions let me know

  14. Well, returning to the OP. Gaspard de la Nuit. So many nights I have immersed myself in those three movements; difficult listening that I find very easy. But that was an astounding interpretation, and the emotional commitment shown in her face at the applause was no surprise. Wow.

    • Remarkable…it might have been my telly, but there was a point during Le Gibet when it looked like her eyes had rolled back in her head. And during Scarbo, she occasionally looked like the goblin had appeared in front of her. Suffice to say that I wanted to share her performance here…

      I’ve heard Alice-Sara Ott playing Chopin before, but I’d never heard her play Ravel – I found it on YouTube by happy accident and it was an experience to be savoured.

      I believe she has a recording available with Gaspard… on it, along with Satie’s Gnossiennes and some Debussy, I think.

      • She’s a new name to me, but I was riveted – apart from the ad for rooftop solar that burst in at the end of Ondine, obvs :-(. She’s riveting to watch as well as listen to – I watched her playing Ludwig Van’s 3rd Piano Concerto on YT, and the way she communicates with an orchestra is fascinating. She’s been diagnosed with MS, which is very sad.

      • Many years ago, when the world’s tastes had not splintered like fractals, there was that bit of the record shop labelled Easy Listening. A housemate who was regularly subjected to my idea of music for relaxation, said that there needed to be a genre Difficult Listening just for me. He had a point (though he didn’t know that the rest of you lot would be loitering there too). Whether it be Crimson, Messiaen or the dronefest that is my taste in European folk dance, I home in on the dissonant, the angular, the non-entry level, and I have a long attention span. There is nothing arch or contrary about this. I don’t even notice while I throw myself into new material. Only later do I step back and think ‘Hmmm, that’s not an easy introduction, is it?’

        So to Ravel; magnificent Bolero can be made sense of at the first listen, its structure writ large, its melody instantly recognisable; exquisite Pavane will not scare the horses on Radio 3 or Classic FM; but Gaspard? It’s all over the place; you can have no idea where it’s going to go; it feels like it has no precedent, or even the context of an era to which it belongs, and the remarkable passage that starts at 21:45 in Scarbo, well there’s stuff in there I’ve never heard anywhere else. And the audacity of the ending! No set piece finale, but what could seem inconsequential, flippant even. Then the applause doesn’t kick in for nigh on twenty seconds.

        Sorry, I’m getting excitable again! I either need a lie down, but more like I will listen to it all over again. I guess what I am saying is that all that challenge and complexity never seems to faze me; I don’t even notice it; I love it. I am not claiming to be special over this; in fact, I think many of you will recognise the signs.

  15. Forget all the associations. This is a splendidly spooky tune.

    On the theremin.

    Perhaps you prefer it played on the saw?

    Yikes! Seth Lakeman has written a Midsomer murder ballad.

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