Concerto for the left hand of Ravel

The Concerto for the left hand in major D of Maurice Ravel is a Concerto for Piano and orchestra in only one movement made up between 1929 and 1931 and created with Vienna on January 5th 1932 by its dedicatee, the Austrian pianist penguin Paul Wittgenstein. The originality of this work to “tragic vehemence” and considerable virtuosity lies in its pianistic part, written for the only left hand of the executant.

History of work

In 1929, one year after the completion of the Bolero , Ravel accepted almost simultaneously two orders of concerto: the first came from the leader Serge Koussevitzky, which was on the point of celebrating the fifty years of the Symphony orchestra of Boston, for which it was going to compose the Concerto in ground ; the second of the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had lost the right-hand man during the First World War on the Russian face. This courageous pianist, who had not given up his art in spite of this infirmity, ordered works for the left hand with some of the largest type-setters of the moment: in addition to Ravel, he requested Florent Schmitt, Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss and Sergueï Prokofiev (the Fourth concerto for piano of this last is composed besides for the left hand alone).

The Concerto for the left hand was made up almost at the same time as the Concerto in ground , claiming in Ravel of the months of eagerness. The type-setter never heard his work played in his version for piano and orchestra. He attended creation by Paul Wittgenstein, in a version arranged for two pianos, in Vienna in November 1931. This at the very least surging creation put a term at collaboration between the two men. The pianist had indeed taken freedom to carry out some “arrangements” in work (in fact of deep rehandlings) so that this one is better with its suitability. “I am an old pianist and that does not sound” it had declared in Ravel to justify these freedoms. Ravel was not easily deceived: “I am an old orchestrator and that sounds! ” . The type-setter left Vienna precipitately and was opposed one moment to the arrival of Wittgenstein to Paris. This last having the exclusiveness in the Concerto for six years, it was too much late for Ravel when work was created in Paris in its original form by Jacques February under the direction of Charles Munch, the March 19th 1937.

Well later, Wittgenstein regretted its words and returned justice in Ravel: “That always takes time to me to enter a difficult music. I suppose that Ravel was very disappointed by it and I was sorry. But one forever learned how to me to make seeming. It is only later, after having studied the concerto during months, which I started to be fascinated about it and which I carried out about which philosopher's stone it was. ” (quoted in the piano music of Maurice Ravel , New York, 1967)

The Concerto for the left hand is today one of the most played works and most universally appreciated of Maurice Ravel, though less popular because less accessible than its fraternal twin, the Concerto in ground .

Music

Many specialists regard the Concerto for the left hand as one of most perfect of the repertory. It is about a violent, imposing and dramatic work, painting of a fatal quarrel between the piano and the orchestral mass. Collected in the field of the length (the Concerto is of only one holding, although one can distinguish three movements there), this work one of is rythmées and most energetic of Ravel.

“In a work of this nature, it is essential that texture does not give the impression to be meaner than that of a part written for the two hands. Also I resorted to a style which is much closer to that, readily imposing, of the traditional concertos. After a first part impressed of this spirit an episode in the character of an improvisation appears which gives place to a jazz music. They are only thereafter that one will realize that the episode in style jazz is built, actually, on the topics of the first part. ” (Maurice Ravel, quoted in the Daily telegraph of July 11th, 1931)

Ravel analyzed during the composition of this work of the studies of Saint-Saëns for the left hand, and took as a starting point the Second concerto of Liszt which he admired readily. The type-setter introduced many keys of Jazz into the second part, and the percussions play in the whole of work a fundamental role and obsessing. The concerto in addition gives place to sound surges as there exists little at Ravel about it. For the soloist, to face this monument can concern the challenge: the solo part is extremely difficult, the left hand alone having to cover the territory of the two hands.

“has two hands the song and the accompaniment are next to, are juxtaposed, are penetrated sometimes, but by preserving their duality of origin; here the two emergent one of the same mould (...). In addition, it is with the inch that the main role in the melody expression is reserved. Shouldered well by the block of the other fingers, it goes, by the side play of the wrist and that of its own musculature, to print itself deeply in the keyboard with a quality of penetration which is only with him. ” (Marguerite Length, With the piano with Maurice Ravel , Paris, 1971)

This music blackest is written by Ravel (with that of Gaspard of the night and of the Waltz ). According to the analysis of Marcel Marnat, the Concerto for the left hand falls under the line of the Waltz and the Boléro . With their image, it is an exciting and fatalistic work at the same time, it is a swirl of concerns, perplexity vis-a-vis a world which, with orée of the Thirties, seems again promised with the disaster. With their image, it is completed by a true setting with musical death. The end of this masterpiece is really unforgettable: the piano, which has just completed a gives rhythm into clearly-obscure, intensely poetic, of frightening technical difficulty, finally is joined and swallowed by the orchestra, to die under an ultimate ramming of the percussions. Work does not comprise any particular program, however one can consider that Ravel placed there all that the horrors of the war could inspire to him (from the sad fate which its dedicatee had undergone, and from its lived personal as a soldier).

“All here is imposing, monumental, on a holocaust, blazing horizon scale monstrous where the bodies are consumed and absorbs the spirit, of the vast human herds grimaçant of suffering and anguish. And this colossal fresco, with dimensions of a calcined universe, in fact the five fingers of the sinistral hand, queen of ill omen will brush the rough reliefs of them. ” (Marguerite Length, With the piano with Maurice Ravel , Paris, 1971)

Famous recordings

Samson François, with the Orchestra of the Company in the Concerts of the Academy directed by Andre Cluytens, signed in 1960 a recording of reference, of an unequalled quality to date. Michel Béroff with Claudio Abbado and more recently Krystian Zimmermann with Pierre Boulez also superbly defended it.

References

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