Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G-dur

The premiere of this work, completed in early 1931, was originally scheduled for March that in Amsterdam, with Ravel at the piano. Yet the composer fell ill, so he dedicated the composition to pianist Marguerite Long, who performed for the first time in Paris on January 14th, 1932. She soon went on a European tour with Ravel as conductor. In March 1932, they played it in Warsaw during what was to be Ravel’s only trip to Poland.
This was also Ravel’s last sizeable work. The bouts of indisposition that at first only made him cancel his performances exacerbated to a major illness. Yet even a year previously the composer was working on two piano concertos at the same time. The other one was Concerto in D for the left hand, commissioned by pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during the war. Ravel, himself a veteran, rushed into the project with enthusiasm and set aside Concerto in G for a while – not for the first time, too. As early as in 1911, he had been drafting a piece for piano and orchestra based on Basque motives. Its material has been probably used in the first movement of Concerto in G.
The concerto is tripartite and, according to Ravel himself, relates to the tradition of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. Although he meant by this that he was in pursuit of ideal balance and clarity, today his statement invites reflection on the sense of established views on music.
∙ Movement One (Allegramente) begins with a percussion-like impulse of a lively and wittily rhythmical theme, with a trumpet in concert as well as the piano. The second theme, poetic and lyrical, comes as a surprise with its phrase seemingly from a jazz standard. Both themes reappear again and again, one after another, in their ever-new guises. The climax, lyrical at that, is a cadence based on the second theme.
∙ Movement Two (Adagio assai) has a very unusual form. A long piano solo, full of simplicity, constantly brushes off distant keys; a few moments after the entry of the flute and the remaining instruments, it ends in an archaised cadence. Yet its triple rhythm goes on, the colour darkens, and somewhere around the “golden section” spot a climax appears, after which the music dwindles gradually.
∙ The beginning of the third movement (Presto) is even more impulsive than that in the first, and glissandos in winds and piano are even more “jazzy.” Yet his short rondo, with its theme derived from a simple figuration, with the concise ritornello that ultimately ends the composition (and that has probably served as its catalyser), with its grotesque à la bataille episodes and surprising climaxes of seemingly trivial motives, has its obvious model in the finale to Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5. And this explains Ravel’s original intent.

Maciej Negrey