BaL 18.10.25 - Ravel: Piano concerto in G major

[oliver sudden]

Your quote is more accurate !

Alas yes, it was the last major piece he wrote, and all that he managed between 1931 and his death in 1937 were the Don Quichotte songs…

[Ein Heldenleben]

But Ravel's notation is surely meant to give a staggered effect: very definitely 3/4 not 6/8 for the left hand underneath the long (two-week) melody.

Yes it’s the tied notes that create the staggered effect. Trifonov currently on R3 is playing hands together but with considerable agogics between beats 2 and 3 (sometimes 1 and 2 ) of the distinct waltz rhythm. Rather lovely playing - getting a very good tone out of a decently tuned piano.
PS - end trill do die for!
oh dear applause - just killed the moment.

[silvestrione]

Yes it’s the tied notes that create the staggered effect. Trifonov currently on R3 is playing hands together but with considerable agogics between beats 2 and 3 (sometimes 1 and 2 ) of the distinct waltz rhythm. Rather lovely playing - getting a very good tone out of a decently tuned piano.
PS - end trill do die for!
oh dear applause - just killed the moment.

I hear no waltz rhythm here (but I am not a dancer), more an aria for piano of heavenly length, with a feeling of philosophical profundity, a musical profundity created by the re-imagining and extending of the established 'moves' and tensions and approaches to climax and renewal of melody. All consummated with the surprise harmony at the end of the cor anglais solo.

It might have been written for a Michelangeli. Though there are other ways to do it, of course...

[Ein Heldenleben]

I hear no waltz rhythm here (but I am not a dancer), more an aria for piano of heavenly length, with a feeling of philosophical profundity, a musical profundity created by the re-imagining and extending of the established 'moves' and tensions and approaches to climax and renewal of melody. All consummated with the surprise harmony at the end of the cor anglais solo.

It might have been written for a Michelangeli. Though there are other ways to do it, of course...

Trifonov definitely played it in 3/4 time slightly accenting the low E creating a waltz effect (even with a bit of VPO style delay of the third beat ) in a couple of bars but you’re right you can play it very differently…
It’s too slow to actually dance to in the same way that Chopin’s are generally too fast …

[Maclintick]

The version I have of this is that Marguerite Long herself complimented him on the melody’s huge flowing phrase (“grande phrase qui coule”), to which he replied "Flowing! But I wrote it a bar at a time and it nearly killed me!" ("Qui coule ! Mais je l’ai faite mesure par mesure et j’ai failli en crever !")

Here the composer protesteth too much, I feel, since in typical fashion he had set himself an intricate Swiss-watchmaker-style challenge of writing the longest sustained melody in music over 35 bars with no repetitions (or hesitations or deviations for that matter).

[Nick Armstrong]

But Ravel's notation is surely meant to give a staggered effect: very definitely 3/4 not 6/8 for the left hand underneath the long (two-week) melody.

Sure; but I mean where notes fall on the same beat. Maybe the ‘duh-duh’ effect is ‘authentic’ but I prefer when notes sound together - on repeated listening, at least….

[CallMePaul]

Alas yes, it was the last major piece he wrote, and all that he managed between 1931 and his death in 1937 were the Don Quichotte songs…

Ravel suffered a serious head injury in 1932, which led to a serious brean disease. I had been led to believe that this was Pick's disease (aka frontal lobe dementia) but Wikipedia suggests other possibilities. I have not read a full-lenfth Ravel biography so don't know if recent researchers have been able to elucidate further, but this accident and its aftermath seem to be the likely explanation for his lack of compositional activity. He died at the young age of 62.

[oliver sudden]

Sure; but I mean where notes fall on the same beat. Maybe the ‘duh-duh’ effect is ‘authentic’ but I prefer when notes sound together - on repeated listening, at least….

Marguerite Long certainly has the right hand a hair behind the left hand almost throughout the slow movement in the recording Ravel supervised (sometimes misleadingly credited to him as conductor; he did conduct her in performances I think). It sounds weird to modern ears but as I mentioned, Debussy and Ravel (and a hundred others in their day) would have found it weird that today’s pianists plonk down all the notes at once all the time!

I posted this upthread (Marcelle Meyer playing Debussy in 1947)—how she constantly varies the degree of synchronisation to bring out the different layers is utterly extraordinary. Even most of the block chords are subtly asynchronous and it changes the attack completely. And she studied the Preludes with Debussy… it’s one of my favourite piano recordings of anything.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rwz0rok2c8

By a strange coincidence I listened to the François/Cluytens today for the first time in ages… I couldn’t really get my ears around the asynchronicity of the hands in the slow movement for quite a while, but hearing it having discovered that Meyer recording a few years ago, and just after listening to the Long a couple of times in the last few days, put it into a much more realistic perspective. I really do recommend having a good try at getting this way of playing into one’s ears since it’s such a shame to miss out on all the wonderful musicians on record who play with this parameter!

[Pulcinella]

Sure; but I mean where notes fall on the same beat. Maybe the ‘duh-duh’ effect is ‘authentic’ but I prefer when notes sound together - on repeated listening, at least….

Ah! Understood and in concord with your opinion.

[Nick Armstrong]

Marguerite Long certainly has the right hand a hair behind the left hand almost throughout the slow movement in the recording Ravel supervised (sometimes misleadingly credited to him as conductor; he did conduct her in performances I think). It sounds weird to modern ears but as I mentioned, Debussy and Ravel (and a hundred others in their day) would have found it weird that today’s pianists plonk down all the notes at once all the time!

I posted this upthread (Marcelle Meyer playing Debussy in 1947)—how she constantly varies the degree of synchronisation to bring out the different layers is utterly extraordinary. Even most of the block chords are subtly asynchronous and it changes the attack completely. And she studied the Preludes with Debussy… it’s one of my favourite piano recordings of anything.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rwz0rok2c8

By a strange coincidence I listened to the François/Cluytens today for the first time in ages… I couldn’t really get my ears around the asynchronicity of the hands in the slow movement for quite a while, but hearing it having discovered that Meyer recording a few years ago, and just after listening to the Long a couple of times in the last few days, put it into a much more realistic perspective. I really do recommend having a good try at getting this way of playing into one’s ears since it’s such a shame to miss out on all the wonderful musicians on record who play with this parameter!

Very interesting. Must take a listen again to some of the ‘oldies’…

I wonder if it’s analogous to the touches of portamento a lot of modern conductors try and apply to Rachmaninov’s 2nd symphony (about which I whinged in a recent thread) - when modern musicians try and do it (in the name of ‘authenticity’) it seems affected and annoying … but no doubt when it was integral to the playing style of the time and subtly integrated into the whole, it works.

[smittims]

I must say, Nick ,that I for one am an enthusiast of 'reconstructed ' portamento when playing the music of past centuries, as I'm convinced it was a regular featutre of string playing from the time players began to use unfretted intsruments until the 1920's when it was progressively-discouraged by conductors who wanted to pursue the drive to precision (Tosacnini, Szell and Boult, for instance).

Yes, I agree it sounds a little artificial since modern players just don't (yet, anyway) do it instinctively as their predecessors used to. But I think many aspects of performing 'old' music sound aritificial to me: Counter-tenors instead of castrati, small string sections playing rigorously without any vibrato, and the clean , 'world-standard' sound we hear everywhere now instead of the 'local' characteristics that used mark one orchestra against another . Try as we might, we cannot reproduce 'old' performance , only give a modern approximation or compromise.

Coincidentaly, the Ravel concerto was played in Classical Live yesterday and guess what,there was applause after the slow movement . No 'whooping' though : when did audiences start 'whooping' I wonder. Is it historically-authentic?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Marguerite Long certainly has the right hand a hair behind the left hand almost throughout the slow movement in the recording Ravel supervised (sometimes misleadingly credited to him as conductor; he did conduct her in performances I think). It sounds weird to modern ears but as I mentioned, Debussy and Ravel (and a hundred others in their day) would have found it weird that today’s pianists plonk down all the notes at once all the time!

I posted this upthread (Marcelle Meyer playing Debussy in 1947)—how she constantly varies the degree of synchronisation to bring out the different layers is utterly extraordinary. Even most of the block chords are subtly asynchronous and it changes the attack completely. And she studied the Preludes with Debussy… it’s one of my favourite piano recordings of anything.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rwz0rok2c8

By a strange coincidence I listened to the François/Cluytens today for the first time in ages… I couldn’t really get my ears around the asynchronicity of the hands in the slow movement for quite a while, but hearing it having discovered that Meyer recording a few years ago, and just after listening to the Long a couple of times in the last few days, put it into a much more realistic perspective. I really do recommend having a good try at getting this way of playing into one’s ears since it’s such a shame to miss out on all the wonderful musicians on record who play with this parameter!

As you say the prewar pianists like Paderewski would be very bemused by the hands together style of today which doesn’t do much to help elegant rubato. I’ve heard countless times that the “trick “ to rubato is to keep the pulse going in the left hand and make the tempo alteration in the right. But modern pianists never seem to do this they are so determined to keep together - so you get that lurching effect . In certain works like Chopin nocturnes and the slow section of the G minor Ballade it’s almost begging for the right hand to float free of the left in the manner of a singer and orchestra but the tyros of today seem reluctant.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I must say, Nick ,that I for one am an enthusiast of 'reconstructed ' portamento when playing the music of past centuries, as I'm convinced it was a regular featutre of string playing from the time players began to use unfretted intsruments until the 1920's when it was progressively-discouraged by conductors who wanted to pursue the drive to precision (Tosacnini, Szell and Boult, for instance).

Yes, I agree it sounds a little artificial since modern players just don't (yet, anyway) do it instinctively as their predecessors used to. But I think many aspects of performing 'old' music sound aritificial to me: Counter-tenors instead of castrati, small string sections playing rigorously without any vibrato, and the clean , 'world-standard' sound we hear everywhere now instead of the 'local' characteristics that used mark one orchestra against another . Try as we might, we cannot reproduce 'old' performance , only give a modern approximation or compromise.

Coincidentaly, the Ravel concerto was played in Classical Live yesterday and guess what,there was applause after the slow movement . No 'whooping' though : when did audiences start 'whooping' I wonder. Is it historically-authentic?

Sadly that scattering of applause completely destroyed the atmosphere Trifonov has created not least with that wonderful concluding trill.

[oliver sudden]

Very interesting. Must take a listen again to some of the ‘oldies’…

I wonder if it’s analogous to the touches of portamento a lot of modern conductors try and apply to Rachmaninov’s 2nd symphony (about which I whinged in a recent thread) - when modern musicians try and do it (in the name of ‘authenticity’) it seems affected and annoying … but no doubt when it was integral to the playing style of the time and subtly integrated into the whole, it works.

Back in 2020 (and maybe a bit of 2021) I listened to the entire Warner Barbirolli Brick. It was a splendid experience but one thing that was a little sad about it was the way that portamento gradually lessened as the box progressed! You could hear it across the various Nimrods, for example, although even his very first is conservative compared to Elgar’s own; Åse’s Death from Peer Gynt was another one where the slides were plenteous to start with and gradually vanished. And then for his Mahler 9 he had to persuade the BPO strings to do any at all. I forget if that’s where his “I’ll pay the fine for indecency” quote comes from. Of course it’s not just a question of sliding or not sliding—it’s also a matter of how much time you pinch from the first note, whether and how much you back off on the dynamic, and as you say it absolutely has to be integrated, which means it really has to be felt.

I think the potential attraction of the hands being out of synch is the possibility of making the right hand’s phrasing really independent of the accompaniment, not just by making it easier to play in a different dynamic but by making it possible for that dynamic to come across. The beginning of the Ravel Adagio is in such a tiny proportion of the keyboard (you constantly have the same note appearing in the melody and accompaniment in close succession) and letting the melody drift a bit seems very legitimate to me. I highly recommend listening to Long and then Samson François! (His version was given surprisingly short shrift by the Tribune in 2011, partly because of his ‘décalage’… he studied with Long from 1938!) If I’m focussing on the melody I honestly don’t even hear François’s right-hand drift. And the lonely top E is so lovingly floated, and for once smack bang in synch. Marvellous.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Back in 2020 (and maybe a bit of 2021) I listened to the entire Warner Barbirolli Brick. It was a splendid experience but one thing that was a little sad about it was the way that portamento gradually lessened as the box progressed! You could hear it across the various Nimrods, for example, although even his very first is conservative compared to Elgar’s own; Åse’s Death from Peer Gynt was another one where the slides were plenteous to start with and gradually vanished. And then for his Mahler 9 he had to persuade the BPO strings to do any at all. I forget if that’s where his “I’ll pay the fine for indecency” quote comes from. Of course it’s not just a question of sliding or not sliding—it’s also a matter of how much time you pinch from the first note, whether and how much you back off on the dynamic, and as you say it absolutely has to be integrated, which means it really has to be felt.

I think the potential attraction of the hands being out of synch is the possibility of making the right hand’s phrasing really independent of the accompaniment, not just by making it easier to play in a different dynamic but by making it possible for that dynamic to come across. The beginning of the Ravel Adagio is in such a tiny proportion of the keyboard (you constantly have the same note appearing in the melody and accompaniment in close succession) and letting the melody drift a bit seems very legitimate to me. I highly recommend listening to Long and then Samson François! (His version was given surprisingly short shrift by the Tribune in 2011, partly because of his ‘décalage’… he studied with Long from 1938!) If I’m focussing on the melody I honestly don’t even hear François’s right-hand drift. And the lonely top E is so lovingly floated, and for once smack bang in synch. Marvellous.

That’s absolutely right . The cynic in me wonders whether it’s the current system of the teachers often being the judges at competitions that’s squashed that right hand unshackling from the left hand pulse . That and the fact that it’s quite difficult to do. Of course for jazz pianists it’s second nature…..