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Ravel Piano Concerto In G Score Pdf4/26/2021
At some early stage, Ravel had told Marguerite Long that the concerto would end softly, with trills.
![]() The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not for but against the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto Divertissement. Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title Concerto should be sufficiently clear. While we should always read composers letters, memoirs, program notes, and so on, we need to be circumspect about evaluating them. And Maurice Ravel, we might remember, was a man fascinated by masks. He was not, he insisted, cold and unemotional, but I am Basque, and while the Basques feel deeply they seldom show it, and then only to a very few. Maurice, his eldest son, became a musician enchanted by elegantly functioning machines. He was charming, shy, dandified, and of the most delicate build. Marguerite Long recalled how once, on their concerto tour, he forgot to pack his patentleather shoes and how difficult it was to find any in his size. A lifelong bachelor not known to have had any close personal attachment, Ravel loved children: Mother Goose and his operatic collaboration with Colette, LEnfant et les sortilges ( The Child and the Magic Spells which will be presented by the SFS in semi-staged performances June 27, 29-30), are miraculously perceptive and loving masterpieces for and about children. The late musicologist Stephen Parkany has pointed out that Ravels G major Concerto also begins like some wondrous contraption in a toy shop: A percussionist releases the woundup spring of the slapstick. After a while, the piano comes to the fore with a languid theme that reminds us that the first intention behind this work had been to charm American audiences. Like many classical musicians at that time, Ravel was smitten with what he knew of jazz, which he had heard during his North American tour of 1928. Diverse blue twists, some of them reminiscent of Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue, are seductively prominent in the first movement of the G major Concerto. The master of the Rapsodie espagnole, LHeure espagnole, and Bolro had probably lifted some of the concerto from Zaspiak bat, a rhapsody to his Basque homeland. Toward the end, the harp subtly suggests that a solo passage might be in order, an idea the piano embraces with enthusiasm, after which the music moves swiftly to a conclusion both bright and firm. The piano, alone, spins out a long, long melody over a kind of slow waltz bass that manages to be incredibly gentle even while it moves in constant crossrhythm against the song in the right hand. When this melody is rounded off, a flute and then other woodwinds softly make their presence known. Eventually the English horn steps forward to sing the serene melody, while the piano decorates it with fanciful garlands.
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