Alexander Krichel has always been interested in the piano works of the French composer Maurice Ravel. As a young student in Hanover, he played Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit”, one of the most difficult piano works ever written. And in recent years, the Hamburg native and ECHO Klassik prize winner has given numerous concerts with Ravel’s two piano concertos.

For his fourth album for Sony Classical, entitled “Miroirs”, Alexander Krichel has recorded three highly demanding and musically different piano cycles with which Ravel helped shape musical impressionism. The album features the piano suite “Le Tombeau de Couperin”, completed in 1917, the “Miroirs” (1904/05) and “Gaspard de la nuit” (1908). For Alexander Krichel, these works are fascinating examples of Ravel’s contrasting expressive palette and moods which contrasts brightness with darkness and light with shadow.