RAVEL'S AMERICAN TOUR, 1928

The most exhilarating tour of his career. The S.S. France sailed Dec 27, 1927 from Le Havre, arrived in New York Jan 4th. Sailed back across on April 27, 1928.

Ravel was dazzled by American life, its skyscrapers, huge cities, advanced technologies, and impressed by Negro spirituals, jazz and the excellence of American orchestras.

Four-month tour, criss-crossed the continent, visited 25 cities, conducted the New York Phil, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago orchestras: "Your orchestras are the best anywhere, combining German brass with French woodwinds."
—Ravel

Maurice Ravel at the piano playing Rhapsody in Blue on his 53rd birthday (1928) for George Gershwin (who composed the piece) and friends at Eva Gauthier's party. (From left Oscar Fried, Eva G., Ravel, Manoah Tedesco and Gershwin. Eva Gauthier (1885-1958) was a Canadian-American mezzo-soprano who sang American premieres of works by Satie, Ravel and Stravinsky throughout her career sang).

Shortly after Ravel arrived in New York, Jan. 4, 1928, he travelled to Boston for two all-Ravel programs by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge on Jan 12th, and at Symphony Hall in Boston on Jan 13th: Tombeau de Couperin, Rapsodie Espagnole, Shéhérazade, and La Valse.

The BSO had performed the same program at Carnegie Hall a week earlier to a sold-out audience:

"I was forgetting the concert which the Boston Symphony played in New York, devoted to my works. I had to appear on stage: a standing ovation of 3500; a tremendous ovation, climaxed by whistling... Sunday evening, a private concert and a gallop in evening dress for the train to Boston."
—Letter, Ravel to his brother, January 13,1928, from The Copley-Plaza in Boston.

George Gershwin (1898-1937) was pleased to know Ravel thought very highly of Rhapsody in Blue (1924). Premiered on Feb 12, 1924 at Aeolian Hall (NYC) with Paul Whiteman's jazz band (23 musicians) and the composer at the piano in a program entitled "An experiment in Modern Music." Instant success. 84 performances in less than three years.

As early as 1927, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald opined that Rhapsody in Blue idealized the youthful zeitgeist of the Jazz Age. Later a historian opined that The Great Gatsy embodied the "sadness and the remote jauntiness of a Gershwin tune."

Following Gershwin's example, Ravel was not trying to convey authentic jazz. Instead, he used his enthusiastic reaction to it as a way of accessing new exotic musical sounds, timbres and ideas to enrich his own voice.

"I venture to say that nevertheless it is French music, Ravel's music, that I have written."—Ravel

Upon his return from the U.S., Ravel simultaneously composed two Concertos for Piano and Orchestra, two of the greatest and most frequently-performed 20th-century concertos, infused with jazz overtones.

"Planning the two piano concertos simultaneously was an interesting experience. The G Major Concerto is written very much in the spirit of those of Mozart and Saint-Saens.... light-hearted and brilliant, and not aimed at profundity... The Concerto for the Left Hand alone is very different. It contains many jazz effects, and the writing is not so light. In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands..." —Ravel

Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

In one 20-minute movement composed in 1929-1930. Commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, an Austrian pianist who had lost his right arm during WW1. (Brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein). Its opening with double basses introducing an ominous contrabassoon solo is a reminder of the foreboding start of La Valse.

Concerto pour la main gauche, with the score, 1959 recording, Samson François, piano. André Cluytens conducting.

Concerto pour la main gauche, LIVE, with Russian pianist Eliso Virsaladze and the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jaques Février gave the first "official" performance of the Left Hand Piano Concerto in 1937 (1942 historical recording).

Piano Concerto in G Major

1929-1931- dedicated to and premiered in 1932 by Marguerite Long with Ravel conducting. Piano Concerto in G Major, historical 1932 original recording, after they took the new concerto on tour all over Europe.

1985 LIVE recording Alicia de Larrocha plays 3rd movt.

2009 LIVE recording with Martha Argerich, piano and Yuri Temirkanov conducting, Nobel Prize Concert, Stockholm.

1990 LIVE recording with Martha Argerich, Charles Dutoit, Orchestre National de France

Rehearsal with Charles Dutoit conducting and Martha Argerich, piano

The Cotton Club, Harlem, Duke Ellington with his band, Black musicians and white patrons.

"This national American music of yours embodies a great deal of the rich and diverting rhythm of your jazz, a great deal of the emotional expression in your blues, and a great deal of the sentiment and spirit characteristic of your popular melodies and songs, worthily contributing to a noble heritage in music."
—Ravel's public lecture on contemporary music, delivered at the Rice Institute, Houston, April 6th -7th, 1928 before Ravel performed in recitals solo piano and chamber music (Violin-piano sonata, and Mélodies, including his Shéhérazade, three poems for voice and piano).