The sounds made by water – those of fountains, waterfalls and streams – were a popular subject in musical impressionism. Liszt had already explored this in his “Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este”, and it was also a subject that inspired Ravel. At the same time he broke fresh compositional ground: in his “Jeux d’eau” he developed a kind of floating harmony and created new tonal effects.

These shimmering tone paintings are among the first of our Urtext editions by this important French master. In o...