Maurice Ravel was the son of a
distinguished engineer and inventor. In
the 1870s, when his father was working
on railroad construction projects in Spain,
Maurice was born on the French side of
the nearby border. The family returned to
Paris a few months later, and there, at the
age of seven, Maurice Ravel began his
musical studies; at eighteen, he began to
write music, at twenty, he was a published
composer.
In the late 1920s, when the Boston
Symphony Orchestra was approaching
composers to whom it offered commissions
for compositions to be performed during
the 1930-1931 anniversary celebration.
Stravinsky, Hindemith, Respighi were
among those who accepted and wrote
new works for the orchestra, but Ravel,
after airing the possibility of writing a
piano concerto, sent nothing because he
had several other projects in mind at the
time. In addition to the concerto, he was
thinking of an opera on the subject of Joan
of Arc that was never to be written.
Ravel worked off and on for more than
two years on the concerto, which was to
be his last orchestral composition. Shut off
from the rest of the world at his country
home, he spent ten to twelve hours a day
at his desk, especially during the period
in 1931 when he was simultaneously
writing both the Concerto in G and Piano
Concerto for the Left Hand.
The G Major Concerto was barely
finished in time for its premiere in Paris
on January 14, 1932. The soloist was
Marguerite Long, to whom the work is
dedicated; the composer conducted.
Later, Ravel told a newspaper interviewer
that this work was a “concerto in the strict
sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and
Saint Saens.” “I believe,” he said, “that
a concerto can be both gay and brilliant
without necessarily being profound
or aiming at dramatic effects . . .. In
the beginning, I thought of calling my
work a ‘divertissement,’ but afterwards
considered this unnecessary, since the
noun ‘Concerto’ adequately describes the
kind of music it contains.”
The first movement, Allegramente, with
its whip crack opening, is a work of hard
and brilliant wit, forceful and energetic.
The slow movement, Adagio assai,
contemplative and rhythmically complex
with hints of the blues, somehow also
arouses recollections of every kind of
concerto slow movement from Bach and
Mozart to Gershwin. The finale, Presto,
is brief and brilliant. It contains a flash of
jazz, fanfares, and piano flourishes.
