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Ravel

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The 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth is on Friday this week. I couldn’t let it pass without a gentle nudge (a Ravel klaxon seems rather inappropriate). Lots on BBC Radio 3 this week if you’re interested.

I’ve posted a jewel-like miniature in the first comment: I hope some of you might add your favourite pieces.

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Comments

  6. You know that feeling when you spot a new thread and you’re about to discuss a pair of very smart brogues that you bought 15 years ago, but suddenly realise you’ve got the wrong end of the stick?

  8. I did music O level at school, and failed miserably. But one of the pieces we studied was Ravel’s ‘Sonatine’, which I came back to in my twenties and discovered a taste for his piano music. I have a double CD of his piano works by Phillipe Entremonte which is one of my regular listens.

  11. Ravel’s piano work has been a constant presence for nearly fifty years, and never fails. All is there, from the well measured classical reserve of Pavane to the wild dissonances of Gaspard. I have several box sets by different pianists, to get the full whammy of different interpretations – Pascal Roge, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, but the one I really grew up with was Abbey Simon. The piece which makes my heart swell is Le Tombeau de Couperin. Here’s Thibaudet’s version.

  14. I like the Ravster. I assume you’ve seen “Un coeur en hiver” which is full of his trios and the music is central to the story. Emmanuelle Béart does a decent job of miming her parts and of course isn’t there for her violin skills. Fab film if anyone hasn’t seen it and the soundtrack album is superb.

  19. i was fascinated to read about Ravel’s visit to the US in 1928 when he met Gershwin.

    This article tells the tale rather well.

    https://cso.org/experience/article/7984/fascinatin-rhythm-when-ravel-met-gershwin

    While in New York, Ravel went to see Gershwin’s new musical Funny Face and declared himself “enchanted.” He expressed interest in meeting Gershwin and hearing him play the Rhapsody in Blue and other jazz-influenced works. (Led by guest conductor André de Ridder, the CSO will perform works by Gershwin and Ravel, with pianist Inon Barnatan as soloist, in concerts Jan. 6-8.)

    Like his fellow French composers Satie and Debussy, Ravel was fascinated by American popular music including ragtime and jazz, according to Howard Pollack, author of George Gershwin: His Life and Work. “That had pretty much been in the air in Paris for a while,“ Pollack wrote. ”[Ravel] had already shown a predilection for using some of that sort of jazzy idiom in his Sonata for Violin and Piano,” completed in 1927.

    At a party held in his honor by mezzo-soprano Éva Gauthier, Ravel celebrated his 53rd birthday on March 7, 1928. One of the guests that evening was Gershwin. During the soirée, the young Broadway songwriter entertained Ravel and the other guests with an impromptu performance of Rhapsody in Blue and a selection of songs including “The Man I Love.”

    Gauthier later wrote: “The thing that astonished Ravel was the facility with which George scaled the most formidable technical difficulties and his genius for weaving complicated rhythms and his great gift of melody.”

    Apparently, the admiration was mutual. Gershwin, who was always looking to learn new styles and techniques, asked the French master to give him lessons in composition. According to Gauthier, Ravel gave serious consideration to Gershwin’s request, but decided that “it would probably cause him to write ‘bad Ravel’ and lose his great gift of melody and spontaneity.”

    Ravel spent several nights with Gershwin, listening to jazz at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where dancers did the lindy hop to hot jazz from some of the nation’s greatest bands. Ravel also visited Connie’s Inn and the nearby Cotton Club, where he heard Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

    This concert combined music by George and Maurice.

  20. I was fascinated by the photo of that birthday party in New York on 7th March 1928.

    And the description of that major, four month-long US tour that Ravel undertook. That led to this article:

    https://www.wrti.org/wrti-spotlight/2025-03-06/what-maurice-ravel-got-from-jazz-and-what-jazz-took-from-ravel

    Maurice Ravel was hailed around the world as France’s greatest living composer when he embarked on his first trip to North America, boarding the S.S. France on Jan. 4, 1928. His fourth-month tour was a whirlwind: Ravel visited 25 cities, conducting virtually every major American orchestra and meeting everywhere with rapturous approval. But the most fateful outcome of the trip was his firsthand exposure to jazz. It left a profound impression on Ravel’s music, which eventually inspired jazz musicians in turn, forming a loop of reciprocal influence.

    The article discusses Ravel’s relation to jazz and jazz’s relation to Ravel…..

    Kind of Blue, which Miles Davis released on Columbia Records in 1959, is the best-selling jazz album of all time, and widely understood as the most iconic. And it’s unimaginable without the influence of Ravel. Listen to how the album begins, with an impressionistic a tempo figure for Paul Chambers’ bass and Bill Evans’ piano, no more hurried in its drift than a plume of smoke. Evans, a pianist deeply enamored of certain Romantic and Impressionist composers, had introduced Davis to the possibilities inherent in Ravel’s music (and even turned him on to specific Ravel interpreters, like the Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli).

    Writing about Kind of Blue in his autobiography, Davis recalled that “because we were into Ravel (especially his Concerto for the Left Hand and Orchestra) and Rachmaninoff (Concerto No. 4), all of that was up in there somewhere.” Of particular interest was Ravel’s exploration of the Dorian mode. As Davis recalled: “We were just leaning toward — like Ravel, playing a sound only with the white keys.”

    Here’ a very brief clip of the Bolero Hitmaker from a us newsreel

    And a silent interview.

    Do we have any lipreaders in the house?

  21. Once again displaying my uncanny ability to lower the tone of even the the most high-brow of AW threads, here’s an excellent educational film for kids about Bolero., which I just stumbled across.

    There’s a whole series of them and they remind me of the wonderful Horrible Histories.

    https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicsExplained.

    A boon for kids, teachers and parents or anyone with an interest in the subject.

    And now an article on Torvill and Dean..

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/torvill-amp-dean-in-from-the-cold-6112357.html

    Ironically, the Russians have paid them the most suitable tribute. In July last year, Baltic Reefer Lines of St Petersburg named two refrigerated cargo ships in their honour, the MV Torvill and the MV Dean, vessels, like the lovers in Bolero, destined to remain linked forever yet eternally apart.

    • Funnily enough, I’ve never liked Bolero, from first hearing it. I heard it when I was quite young and, for many years, it put me off exploring the remainder of Ravel’s music.

      • I don’t have a particular dislike of Bolero apart from having heard it probably too many times which has lent it to becoming slightly stale. Robert Trevino conducting The Basque National Orchestra on two recent outings on the Ondine label have recorded probably the best Bolero I’ve heard in years along with a selection across the two releases of some of Ravel’s best known music. I highly recommend both discs.

  22. An interesting cinematic titbit.

    After the great success of 10, Bo Derek’s career floundered.

    After playing Jane in an unsuccesful Tarzan movie, she returned to Ravel in 1984. Talk about scraping the bottom of the Bolero barrel.

  23. I decided to check IMDB to see if Ravel is mentioned.

    And what is the first film that gets mentioned?

    Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon from 1950.

    As you can hear, the music bears a considerable resemblance to Bolero

    That was a surprise.

    This was quite an interesting discussion.

    https://akirakurosawa.info/forums/topic/rashomon-the-soundtrack/

    It does make me wonder how familiar a Japanese audience would be with Ravel.

    whike you think about here’s Ms Tomomi Nishimoto conducting Bolero.

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