Maurice Ravel is one of my favourite composers. The wonderful thing about ‘favourite’ music is that you keep discovering new aspects to the music and the person who composed it. 1875 – 1937
Maurice Ravel 1875-1937 photo courtesy of BBC Radio 3
Listening to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major* its second movement, I was suddenly struck by those jazz influences. I had stubbed my toe on this idea before.
I recalled that Ravel and his love of and connection to jazz were expertly and entertaingly covered in two of Donald MacLeod’s BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week programs, in 2017 and 2021. Links to both feature at the foot of this post.
I talked through this idea, Ravel & Jazz, with my music mentor, the violinist Jonathan Evans Jones. He immediately pointed me in the direction of Ravel’s Violin Sonata**. I listened to it. Yes! Pure Gershwin (sorry to shout).
Ravel visited to the US in 1926 and stayed for two years. He and George Gershwin became firm friends. Ravel fell deeper in love with jazz.
Gershwin approached Ravel for piano lessons. Ravel demurred saying that is it was he, Ravel, that should be taking tuition from Gershwin. (Ravel admired his income stream!)
Teaching Gershwin, Ravel said "would probably cause him (Gershwin) to write bad Ravel and lose his, Gershwin’s, great gift of melody and spontaneity"
Listening to Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G Major takes you, in its passages, to Times Square and Broadway in NY. In other parts of this work, to those almost silent NY streets. The ones you walk when jet-lagged, and sleep is a silly notion.
(Ravel stayed up to the small hours, most nights of his life, rejoicing in his insomnia.)
TYING A BOW ROUND IT
The jazz master Herbie Handcock: In 1998 he released an album GERSHWIN’S WORLD. Check it out. I would have missed this if not, again, for BBC Radio3. Track <13> Handcock gives his rendition of the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major.
The whole of Hancock’s Gershwin album is a triumph – hey! Joni Mitchell singing ‘The Man I love.’
Music is so important to many. And several of us perhaps discover a new musical idea every day. Diving into Ravel gives us the Provence, the Basque country, the Med and of course, all that jazz.
FOOTNOTES AND FANCIES
* Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major was composed between 1929 and 1931. Among its other influences are jazz and Basque folk music.
** Maurice Ravel's Violin Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano was composed from 1923 to 1927, inspired jazz and blues both American music.
This work was the sole violin sonata published during Ravel's lifetime; the existence of the Violin Sonata No. 1 came to be known long after Ravel's death. For that reason, this sonata was, and still often is called simply "Violin Sonata" without numbering.
