Ravel: Concerto in G for Piano and Orchestra

Concerto in G for Piano and Orchestra

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

The Concerto in G was composed 1930-31 simultaneously with the Piano Concerto in D for the left-hand. These were the last major works completed by Ravel, who began his slow, terrible decline into mental incapacity which ended with his death at the end of 1937. It might have seemed difficult to imagine that the young man whose career was launched in the 1890s with the Minuet antique and the celebrated “Pavane” would conclude his creative life with a brilliant, fizzy virtuoso showpiece, one in which jazz inflections and moments of Spanish coloration would be joined with music of Mozartian simplicity and tenderness. But then, Ravel was always a complex figure, who remains something of an enigma to this day.

Like all gifted French musicians, Ravel attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Faure, a musician of a quite different temperament and outlook, but warmly devoted to his dazzling young pupil. Unlike many a lesser talent, Ravel’s repeated attempts to win the famous Prix de Rome were unsuccessful, even after he had won considerable fame as a composer---eventually this scandalous situation led to the resignation of the director of the Conservatoire, although the prize never was to be his.

The youthful Ravel was very much a product of the post-Baudelairian, ripely decadent fin-de-siecle spirit of the time, sporting an elegantly shaped beard, exquisitely dressed with “dandified” stylishness, projecting an air of mystery. These outward traits would soon fade, although the stylishness remained, and Ravel would always possess a detachment and passion for privacy which added to his reputation as a mysterious figure. Yet he showed a gift for friendship, and for all his Parisian worldliness, was wonderfully responsive to children and able to express their world better than almost any other composer. Utterly French in personality, he was totally free of chauvinism, even defending “enemy composers” (such as Bartok, Schoenberg, Richard Strauss) from shrill nationalists during the Great War. Like many French composers of the day he was fascinated by American jazz. Visiting New York in 1928 he politely refused invitations by local worthies to attend events at the Met and Carnegie Hall---no, he could hear that sort of thing in Paris. He wanted to spend time in the jazz clubs on 125^th Street in Harlem! (He also echoed Dvorak’s pleas that the music of African-Americans be regarded as a great artistic resource in lectures on delivered to often unsympathetic audiences in places such as Dallas, Texas!!)

It is a common reflex to link Ravel’s name to that of Debussy, usually with blithe use of that handy term, “impressionism.” Actually there are pronounced, clearly-defined differences between the two composers which can be seen even in the earliest of Ravel’s works. While the two men admittedly shared a vivid approach to musical colour and texture, the emotional tone is utterly different, with Ravel’s music usually more sharply etched, even dry in character, “objective” in character, often with a parodistic tinge.

Where Debussy might have earned the use of the term “impressionist” through his responsiveness to the world of late-19^th century French painting, Ravel tended to be more influenced by literary sources, and was strongly drawn to the exotic, the fairy-tale, the world of childhood dreams. Interestingly, in the area of piano music it might be claimed that in one important respect Ravel (the younger man) may have influenced Debussy, for it was only after the appearance of Ravel’s remarkable “Jeux d’eaux” that Debussy began to compose his succession of brilliant and original keyboard pieces.

In a very general sense that awkward term “impressionist” might occasionally seem appropriate in speaking of lthe music Ravel composed during the years before the Great War, culminating in his grandest orchestra work, the ballet “Daphnis et Chloe.” But after 1918 there is a marked shift in the musical language and expressive content, vividly heard in the unique blend of the lush and acrid textures in the Choreographi Poem, “La Valse” of 1920. And with the suite, “Le Tombeau de Couperin” the composer hearkens back to his earlier “neo-classic” works (Minuet Antique, Sonatine), which anticipate the new directions being taken by Stravinsky in his neo-classicism of the 1920s.

Ravel was remarked that “the music of a concerto should…be light-hearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects, transparent,” and went so far as to examine piano concertos of Mozart and Saint-Saens in preparing to compose his Concerto in G. This seems particularly appropriate for a composer whose entire career was marked by a constant return to the spirit of classicism. Indeed, should Mozart have known the work of Gershwin and Stravinsky he might well have composed a work comparable to this.

The concerto springs into action with a crack of a whip, the piccolo leading the way with a mocking tune heard against swirling bitonal arpeggios in the piano. This teasing, swaggering melody is repeated in the trumpet over dissonant chords which to some ears suggest the barking of dogs---a curious touch for the cat-loving Ravel! Settling into a transitional theme in F# Major there appears the first of many touches of American jazz scattered throughout the concerto, with a bluesy five-note figure in winds and trumpet. (Ravel had returned from a highly invigorating tour of the USA a few years earlier, and at first thought of composing this concerto as a work for himself to perform on a return tour---sadly, one which never took place.) Easing into E Major, the piano unfolds a second subject of wistful lyricism and simplicity, with the orchestra relegated to the background. Plunging into the development, the soloist focuses almost entirely upon a toccata-like version of the opening piccolo tune (spiced with periodic references to the five-note “blues” figure), becoming a breathless steeplechase with brilliant broken chord and triplet passage-work. A quick sprint the full length of the keyboard leads in the recapitulation, the piccolo tune now played by the piano in more broken chords, accompanied by the “dog bark” figure in the brass. The “bluesy” transitional section returns in regular fashion, preparing the listener for a reprise of the second subject. But in an ingenious cadenza-like passage a fragment from the transition is heard played by the harp in harmonics against a mysterious blur of glissando in the background. Interrupted by a decidedly “jazzy” outburst by the orchestra at full volume, the melody appears high in the solo horn, with the glissandi becoming a murmuring in the winds. There follows an extended cadenza for the piano, with the second subject elaborated in the left hand (in an evocation of that OTHER Ravel concerto), the right hand playing an strings of trills of an almost theremin-like character. This flows forward into a richly romantic statement of the second subject with full orchestra, only to plummet into the lowest register of the piano register to launch a coda based on the opening tune. Again taking on a toccata-like form, the music dashes headlong to conclude the movement with appropriate panache.

Ravel claimed to have composed the ADAGIO ASSAI slow movement “two bars at a time,” modeling it on the slow movement of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. That this intensely personal music would be Ravel’s farewell to composition makes the stillness and simplicity of the movement all the more touching. Heard at length in the piano alone, as if lost in a thought, this plaintive melody then is shared with solo winds. The artless clock-ticking piano accompaniment (moving smoothly without a pause throughout the movement) leads to a subsidiary theme,soon rising to a momentary climax. The main melody returns in the English horn, embellished by delicate figuration in the upper reaches of the piano, for one haunted moment even gliding into a rapt C# Major. The piano figuration becomes a trill, and the movement dissolves into silence.

With a snap to attention, the finale is off and running, with a shrill, “train-whistle” figure in the winds against a chattering rhythmic ostinato pattern in the piano. This quickly gives way to a punchy rhythmic section, decorated with repeated notes in the piano, finding quiet contrast in a buzzing “chinoiserie” passage reminiscent of Ravel’s earlier “faux-orientaliste” music. The “snap to it” chords usher in a jaunty march-like secondary section, leading to brilliant sixteenth-note display which suggests the sort of well-oiled whirl characteristic of Saint-Saens’ piano writing. Without hesitation the rhythmic energy of the movement’s opening leads in the development, first heard in muttering of bassoons, soon taken over by the soloist, joined by winds (referring to the march-like secondary theme), pressing ever onward in mounting excitement. The recapitulation slips in scarcely noticed, the “factory-whistle” theme played by the piano (in F# Major), while at the same time the rattling momentum of the sixteenth notes continues unabated in the orchestra (in G Major!) The march tune returns in all its strutting bluster, the piano revels in its the sixteenth-note bravado, and the movement ends as it began, with a final “snap to attention.”