RAVEL G MAJOR PIANO CONCERTO

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.
-Maurice Ravel


The violent crack of a whip that announces the Ravel Concerto snaps us out of our reverie and forces us to pay attention. Immediately, the piccolo begins the main jaunty pentatonic melody, accompanied by delicate rippling arpeggios in the piano, syncopated pizzicato chords and the playful pinging of the triangle.  The clarinet takes over with an insistent 3-note melody as the flute bubbles away, while the piano cascades up and down the keyboard.  Tension starts to mount as the rest of the orchestra gradually joins in, instruments piling one on top of the other. And then, over a long piano glissando from the lowest to its highest register, the orchestra almost explodes, taking us to a triumphal dominant to tonic cadence in G Major.  And that’s just the first 25 seconds.

I find it difficult, awkward and somewhat embarrassing to write about music.  I have such a visceral response to some pieces, that mere words don’t seem sufficient.  No matter how precise my vocabulary may be, or how glowingly I speak of it, I can’t possibly capture the palpable excitement I feel when I listen to the opening of the Ravel G Major Piano Concerto. There are so many moments of such exquisite, staggeringly heart-breaking beauty, and so many exhilarating passages that I’d rather play it for you and yell at various points: “Did you here that?!? I love when he does that!” But that’s impossible right now, since I’m here and you’re there.  So I’ll just point out several of my favorite moments.

- Around the 4-minute mark of the 1^st movement, there is a sudden break, and the piano starts a thrilling finger-breaking cadenza that starts at the very bottom of the keyboard and goes to the very top. It only lasts about 7 seconds, but the effect is mind blowing. (Martha Argerich plays this cadenza at such breakneck speed and with such accuracy that after hundreds of hearings, my heart still pounds)

- The Adagio Assai (2^nd movement) is one of the most excruciatingly beautiful pieces of music ever written.  It begins for the piano alone for 3 minutes, a gentle melancholic waltz in which the right hand plays in 3/4, and the left in 6/8. The melody spins its web like a bel canto aria – ever unfolding upon itself, ebbing and flowing, a seemingly unending phrase. 

-The last 30 seconds of the 3^rd movement is the most exciting music I can imagine. There is a 7-octave chromatic scale played by the entire orchestra and soloist in unison, (The piano actually plays the scale in broken minor ninths, which, despite having practiced for 20 years, still escapes my grasp) followed by a repetitive percussive chromatic figure. The movement ends as it begins, with dissonant chords and a big bass drum boom.

Amazing stuff. Give it a listen.