Mini-episode: Why does the word 'sonata' keep turning up?

CFEP_103_Ravel

Hello everyone. Welcome to the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast. Five hundred years of incredible music.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and if you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music.

            One of the challenges can be where to start when there is just so much music to choose from… and like a bad algorithm-driven playlist… it could all get annoyingly random… so each episode is going to be tied together with a bit of a theme. And today all the music is going to be from the French composer Maurice Ravel who lived from 1875 to 1937

That music playing in the background is perhaps the best known piece by Ravel.

It is his orchestral work ‘Bolero’ from 1928… and I’ll be playing the whole wonderful thing later in the show.

In addition to that you will hear a section of his first Piano Concerto, the Pavane for a Dead Princess, a little taste of his String Quartet, his amazing orchestral work, La Valse or The Waltz and the ‘Blues’ section of his second Violin Sonata.

                        As a student Ravel had originally seemed headed to a career as a concert pianist. so it is not a surprise that his collection of music for solo piano is really impressive but I will save that up for another day. What is surprising is that he only wrote two concertos for piano and orchestra… I am going to play you the one he wrote between 1929 and 1931 amongst his very last compositions.

            By the 1930’s a lot of European composers were being influenced by Jazz and at the same time being drawn to various folk music traditions of their home countries and for the Concerto Ravel used jazz and Basque folk music from the area of South-Western France where he had been born.

            Here is the final of the three sections of the concerto. It is about four minutes long. Here is soloist Martha Argerich; conductor Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra.

The conclusion to Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

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That was soloist Martha Argerich; conductor Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra with the final section of Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

‘Pavane’ is the name of a slow dance that was popular in the 1500’s in the courts of Spain. In the late 1800s it became popular in France. Lots of people were writing Pavanes. Including one of Ravel’s teachers, Gabriel Fauré.

            This may have inspired his student because in 1899 Ravel wrote a piece for piano he called ‘Pavane for a dead princess’… ‘Pavane pour une infante défante’ describing a slow dance by a princess in the court during Spain’s golden age.

            I don’t know if Ravel intended that the double meaning of his title be echoed in the music… Is it simply a dance that would have been performed by a princess in an earlier time or is it music in tribute upon the death of a princess? I think it works both ways.

            In 1910 he took the piano piece and arranged it for small orchestra. It is about 7 minutes long and here is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

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That was Ravel’s ‘Pavane for a dead princess’ performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Ravel only wrote one work for string quartet. And it was one of his early works from 1903 a few years after graduating from the Paris Conservatory.

Despite that it is regarded as one of the best compositions of the 20^th century for that very special combination of two violins a viola and a cello. And here is the second section performed by the Melos Quartet. It’s about 6 minutes long.

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That was the Melos Quartet with the 2^nd section of Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet.

The more I listen to Ravel, the more I like it… which is perhaps why I am playing it to you but I think coming up now is perhaps my favourite.

It is La Valse or ‘The Waltz’ written in 1919. A quick bit of background…

From 1909 to about 1929 some of the most brilliant classical music written was composed for the Ballets Russes company based initially in Paris and run by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev.  _____

In 1909 Maurice Ravel had written Daphnis & Chloe for Diaghilev and it had been a success. Ten years later the composer was asked for another ballet and Ravel created La Valse, but Diaghilev rejected it. It became a concert piece though in later years it was choreographed several times.

As to what La Valse was about, Ravel was quite explicit…

He wrote a preface to the score… ‘Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth. Set in an imperial court, about 1855.’

Throughout the rest of his life Ravel consistently objected to the various alternate interpretations of La Valse that were proposed. For him it was Vienna in 1855. And that was it.

But if you listen to the way he almost totally dismantles nineteenth century waltz music and gives the whole piece this ghostly feeling… I think it is really hard not to think of how the catastrophe of WWI, which had only just ended, had not just killed or wounded tens of millions but had also destroyed so much of ‘old Europe’ and in particular the Austro-Hungarian Empire of which Vienna had been the capital.                                                                   

Time to make up your own mind… or to just enjoy the music. Here to play Ravel’s ‘La Valse’ is the Symphony Orchestra of Montreal conducted by Charles Dutoit.

It is about 12 minutes long and one final tip. The piece starts quietly and gets loud. And it’s better loud. So, if you can, turn it up.

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That was Maurice Ravel’s ‘La Valse’ played by the Symphony Orchestra of Montreal conducted by Charles Dutoit.

Ok. Next up in this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’ featuring music by Maurice Ravel is a piece by him just for piano and violin.

This is his violin sonata written between 1923 and 1927. Like the piano concerto I played a little earlier this also shows Ravel’s interest in jazz but in addition to jazz there is an American blues influence as well. Indeed the section I am going to play is called ‘Blues’.

In strange corners of the internet people debate whether what Ravel was responding to was more ‘ragtime’ than ‘blues’. You can be the judge but the important point is perhaps that classical music has always been far better attuned to other music of its time than it is given credit for.

Here are violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Fazil Say performing the ‘Blues’ section of Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. It is about six minutes long.

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That was violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Fazil Say performing Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano.

I played a bit of this next piece at the beginning of the show. It is perhaps the best known piece by Ravel. It is his 1928 work for Orchestra called ‘Bolero’. It was in fact commissioned as a ballet by the Russian emigré, heiress and dancer Ida Rubinstein. And again Ravel returned to his early Spanish influences for the piece taking a theme and putting it to the rhythm of the slow ‘boléro’ dance.

Also Ravel decided to see if he could make a piece by repeating the same theme with no development the only change being the increasing number of instruments playing. It has come to be thought of as an almost deliberately comic exercise but to Ravel’s surprise the work was immediately popular.

One of the quirks of the piece is that rhythmically it all hinges on the snare drum part… a repeated sequence of 24 beats that stays the same for the entire fifteen minutes of the work. A clever person on the internet says that is over 5,000 beats on the snare drum.

Whilst the focus of the work is the gradual introduction of more and more instruments playing the theme... the percussionist has to labour on keeping that very precise rhythm going. A pretty incredible feat that you might think about it as you listen to the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit. It starts very quietly… and eventually will get very loud.

Maurice Ravel’s ‘Bolero’

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That was the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit with

Maurice Ravel’s ‘Boléro’.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to

The ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast.

If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net.

There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is almost everything in Italian?’.

            I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

            Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

 This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

 And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… another few minutes of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Fazil Say. With the final section of Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano and the section is called ‘Perpetual Motion’.