The first movement of Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine for piano was probably written in 1903. At any rate the composer played it on 8 January 1904 at a soirée held at the salon of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux. It is not known at exactly what date afterwards he composed the other two movements. While the work had a very positive reception at its premiere in Lyon in 1906, the Paris public was more reserved at first. Ravel seems to have greatly valued the Sonatine because he kept including the clearly and almost classically structured work in his own concert programmes.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
