Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)

Piano Music

The French composer Jacques Ibert spent much of his career as director of the Académie de France in Rome. His own earlier education was at the Collège Rollin and he taught in Paul Mounet's Conservatoire classes for dramatic declamation before becoming a student of harmony there under Ravel's former teacher, Emile Pessard, and under Gédalge and Paul Vidal. His studies at the Paris Conservatoire were interrupted by war service in 1914 as a naval officer but on his return in 1919, with the encouragement of Nadia Boulanger and Roger-Ducasse, he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Le poète et la fée (‘The Poet and the Fairy’). Ibert's compositions in Rome included an orchestral work based on Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, performed at the Colonne concerts in 1922, and the symphonic suite Escales, later arranged for solo piano, the result of travel not only in Italy, but also