“This wonderful Concerto in G, filled with the verve of a 30-year-old musician”, or the “sublime” Piano Concerto for the Left Hand… Francis Poulenc was full of praise when he discovered Ravel’s two works for piano and orchestra at their respective Paris premieres in 1932 and 1933.
Their genesis dates back to 1913, when Ravel was working on a three-movement piano concerto, Zaspiak-bat, whose title refers to the seven provinces of the Basque country where he was born. Then, he thought up Le Grand Meaulnes, a fantasy for piano and orchestra. Both projects were abandoned, but seem to have resurfaced around 1929 in the form of two concertos: the Concerto in G major and the Concerto for the Left Hand. Influenced by the works of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, Ravel initially thought of calling the first one “Divertissement”. This classical heritage can be seen in the three-movement architecture (fast-slow-fast) and in the structure of each movement: the first, close to a sonata form, the second in three parts, and the third resembling a rondo. The central slow movement is a lyrical and poetic interlude, recalling the gentle melancholy of Pavane pour infante défunte of 1899 (orchestrated in 1910), when he was still a student of Fauré at the Conservatoire. In his own words: “This is not the mournful lament of an infanta who has just died, but the evocation of a pavane that could have been danced by such a princess, painted by Velasquez at the Court of Spain.”. Boulez confirms that “Ravel was Ravel from the age of 21, he immediately found his style”.
Beyond the classical framework of the Concerto in G, a frenetic pace of new ideas is set off by the initial whiplash, leaving no respite for performers or listeners. From the outset, the piano superimposes keys, the right hand playing on the white keys (in G), the left on the black keys (in F-sharp). If the piano is virtuosic, so is the orchestra: horn and bassoon passages, harp cadenza concluding with a harmony of divisi strings. In the finale, a horn fanfare serves as a refrain to this toccata, until the soloist picks it up. Gestures borrowed from jazz appear here and there: a syncopated melody in the first movement, clarinet or trombone glissandi in the finale. Caught up in this whirlwind, the listener is carried away by a joyous, frenetic energy.
The Concerto for the Left Hand – completed first – is like the negative of the Concerto in G: rhapsodic in form and dark in color, it was commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), had who lost his right arm in World War I. Ravel, himself a volunteer in the war, had only expressed his distress in his letters. The elegant Tombeau de Couperin says nothing about the war, except through dedications to friends fallen at the front. From the very first bars of the Concerto, the contrabassoon rumbles over a framework of low strings, before the horn introduces a motif reminiscent of the beginning of the “Dies iræ”. The sinister atmosphere is reinforced by the rolling of the bass drum and timpani. The soloist enters alone, playing the absence of a right hand with the pedal. Once again, technical constraints sharpen Ravel’s imagination, as he develops a style that makes the thumb a great melodist – a common feature with the Concerto in G. Here, the presence of jazz elements can be seen as a reminder of its discovery in France during World War I, or as a marker of the Ravelian style of the 1930s, also present in Bolero.
Both a pianist and composer, Ravel excels in orchestrating his own works, such as “Une barque sur l’océan”, from Miroirs. The piano score of this piece, essentially made of arpeggios, turns this endeavour into a challenge. Ravel brilliantly meets it: he distributes the arpeggios across the divisi muted strings, entrusts the melody to two flutes, and uses the sustained passages of clarinets and bassoon, punctuated by the pizzicati of cellos, as a pedal. The final touch of magic comes from the celesta’s cristalline timbre.
Ravel’s remarkable mastery allowed him to swiftly write Bolero, a commission from the dancer and impresario Ida Rubinstein for a Spanish ballet. He started it in the summer of 1928, back from a tour in the United States. Projecting to orchestrate excerpts from Iberia by Albeniz, he finally embarked on a fandango, which turned into Bolero. He had three months to complete it. The piece meets another mindboggling technical challenge: to build a work made of a snare drum ostinato repeated 169 times, 18 melodic entries on Spanish-inspired themes, as well as an unexpected modulation and an outstanding orchestral crescendo. This feat became a hit, revisited in all possible styles by musicians and choreographers all over the world.
Lucie Kayas
