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“Piano Concerto” (1931)
Work suggested by ... William Kraft
Composer ... Maurice Ravel
“Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto,
the second movement in particular, is an important
work highlighting the serious
side of jazz.”
Completed in 1931, French composer Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major was first performed on January 14, 1932, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, conducted by the composer himself, featuring acclaimed pianist Marguerite Long. Originally intending to perform the piece himself, Ravel had dedicated many, long hours practicing the piano études of both Chopin and Liszt, preparing for the eventual premiere of his concerto, but due to his increasingly ill health, and the technical challenges of his brilliant new work, it would ultimately prove impossible.
As early as 1929, while still in favorable health, and having achieved wide acclaim for his recent, 1928 ballet entitled Boléro, Ravel had begun creating his Piano Concerto from an idea conceived many years earlier, intending to showcase his skills as both performer and composer. By this period in his career, Ravel had enjoyed many years of international celebrity, and in a letter to close friends, during his composing of the concerto, he would mention an upcoming European festival in his honor, writing "In the midst of my pregnancy with the concerto (I am at the stage of throwing up) I am suddenly called to Biarritz. You must have seen the billboards designed by Fugita [renowned Japanese painter] announcing 'Le grand festival de Maurice Ravel.' Two hundred francs for a ticket! It's lucky that I can get in 'on the house'."
While his brief trip to Biarritz was only a minor distraction, another more significant interruption would also come before Ravel's completion of his G major concerto, distracting him for a much longer period of time. Asked by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein to write a concerto for the left-hand only, after tragically losing his right arm in the World War I, Ravel agreed. While his work on the Concerto in G had begun some months earlier, it would be the Left-Hand Concerto that would be the first completed. Shortly after the finalization of both of his new works, Ravel stated "It was an interesting experience to conceive and realize the two concertos at the same time. The first [the G major], which I propose to play myself, is a concerto in the strict sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. I believe that a concerto can be both gay and brilliant without necessarily being profound or aiming at dramatic effects. It has been said that the concertos of some great classical composers, far from being written for the piano, have been written against it. And I think this criticism is quite justified."
When also discussing the clearly jazz-influenced qualities of his Concerto in G major, Ravel stated "This concerto is related to my violin sonata [Sonata for Violin and Piano], in which I also used elements of jazz, though only moderately." In that regard, while Ravel's embrace of moderate "elements" of jazz had also previously been incorporated into smaller works such as his one-act opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (1925), the Piano Concerto in G major (1931) would once again show his passion for this truly American art form, as it became increasingly integrated into the fabric of his music.
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 William Kraft:
(b Chicago, 6 Sept 1923). American composer,
conductor, timpanist, and percussionist. Spanning
orchestral, operatic, electronic, and chamber
works, Kraft's music is widely known for its
stylistically serial influence. Prior to serving
as Composer-in-Residence and Director of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra's New Music
Group, from 1981 to 1985, his many years as
principal timpanist and percussionist for
the LAPO included the American premieres of
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus and Pierre
Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maître.
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