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“Sonata for Violin” (1927)
Work suggested by ... Esa-Pekka Salonen
Composer ... Maurice Ravel
“Ravel’s Sonata for Violin
and Piano is a delightful mixture of
French Impressionist textures with whiffs
of jazz.”
Premiering on May 30, 1927, at the Salle Erard in Paris, and dedicated to the brilliant French violinist Helene Jourdan-Morhange, Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Piano (Sonata in G) was first performed by renowned, Rumanian composer and violinist Georges Enesco, with Ravel himself at the piano. Later debuting in America on January 15, 1928, at New York's Gallo Theater, its U.S. premiere would feature virtuoso violinist Joseph Szigeti.
Composing his first violin sonata as early as 1897, while still a promising, young student at the Paris Conservatoire, Ravel's stylistic assimilation of the American jazz he experienced in 1920s Paris can clearly be heard in the contrast between the nineteenth-century influences of his earlier work and the more modern, blues- and jazz-influenced themes of his 1927 Sonata in G. With the majority of his earliest travels outside of Europe occurring during the late 1920s and early 1930s, his first trip to America took place in conjunction with a four-month tour of the United States that included the sonata's 1928 premiere, and involved numerous performances, lectures, and interviews throughout the country.
As a founding member of the Société Musicale Indépendente in Paris, in 1909, Ravel's drive to champion important, new ideas in the evolution of contemporary music had been firmly established by the time of his travels to the U.S.. With this new public platform, built around the society's work in Paris, he continued to speak out on ideas promoting a broader openness to the performance of both French and foreign musical works, regardless of style or genre.
Through his increasing appreciation for the jazz- and blues-influenced works coming from America, Ravel also became an ardent admirer of composer George Gershwin, once describing Gershwin as "a musician gifted with the most brilliant, the most seductive, and perhaps the most profound qualities." Following the achievement of his own place as France's greatest living composer (following the death of Claude Debussy in 1918), Ravel's enthusiasm for the innovation of American jazz, and composers such as Gershwin, continuously helped to remove the barriers facing jazz music's broader acceptance in the field of classical music.
During his 1928 visit to the United States, when discussing his personal incorporation of popular musical forms into his work, and the distinctly blues-influenced style of the second movement of his Sonata for Violin and Piano, Ravel stated "to my mind, blues is one of your greatest musical assets, truly American despite earlier contributory influences from Africa and Spain… I venture to say nevertheless that this [sonata] is French music, Ravel's music, that I have written. Indeed, these popular forms are but the materials of construction."
About Maurice Ravel:
(b Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, 7 March 1875; d Paris, 28 Dec 1937). French composer. One of the most original composers of the early twentieth-century, Ravel's music maintained a distinctively French sensibility while spanning orchestral works, chamber and piano works, opera, and ballet. Widely appreciated in the United States, his characteristic musical voice reached across both the Romantic era and the jazz age.
About Esa-Pekka Salonen:
(b Helsinki, 30 June 1958). Finnish conductor and composer. Making his American debut conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1984, and becoming its Music Director in 1992, Salonen's tenure in Los Angeles has included celebrated productions of works by Messiaen, Hindemith, Debussy, and Stravinsky, as well as world premieres of new works by composers John Adams, Bernard Rands, Rodion Shchedrin, Steven Stucky and his own L.A. Variations, premiering in January 1997.
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