Trilha sonora: Ravel, Concerto em Sol Maior

Maurice Ravel
(1975-1937)

Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major was composed between 1929 and 1931. The concerto is in three movements and is heavily influenced by jazz, which Ravel had encountered on a concert tour of the United States in 1928.

"The G-major Concerto took two years of work, you know. The opening theme came to me on a train between Oxford and London. But the initial idea is nothing. The work of chiseling then began. We've gone past the days when the composer was thought of as being struck by inspiration, feverishly scribbling down his thoughts on a scrap of paper. Writing music is seventy-five percent an intellectual activity." [Maurice Ravel]

 
The concerto was deeply infused with jazz idioms and harmonies, which, at the time, were highly popular in Paris as well as the United States, where Ravel was traveling on a piano tour. Ravel remarked that "The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm. ...Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it." After his well-received tour, Ravel wanted to give the first public performance of this new work himself. However, health issues precluded this possibility, with his preparatory practice of Liszt’s and Chopin's etudes leading to fatigue. He then planned a premiere for March 9, 1931, in Amsterdam, but these plans also were canceled due to his work on the Concerto for the Left Hand, his many public appearances, and his performances of his other works.

Eventually, Ravel offered the premiere and dedicated the concerto to Marguerit Long, who was known for her performances of the works of Fauré and Debussy and had earlier asked Ravel for a new work. She received the score on November 11, 1931, and played the concerto on January 14, 1932, with Ravel conducting the Orchestre Lamoureux. A few days after this highly successful premiere, Ravel and Long started a tour of twenty cities in Europe, where the work was received with consistent enthusiasm. (Wikipedia)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_(Ravel)

Trilha sonora: Le tombeau de Couperin

Maurice Ravel

Le Tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer (or in one case, two brothers) who had died fighting in World War I. Ravel also produced an orchestral version of the work in 1919, although this omitted two of the original movements.

Tombeau in the title is a musical term popular from the 17th century meaning "a piece written as a memorial". The specific Couperin, among a family noted as musicians for about two centuries, that Ravel intended to evoke is thought to be François Couperin "the Great" (1668–1733). Ravel stated that his intention was to pay homage more generally to the sensibilities of the Baroque French keyboard suite not necessarily to imitate or pay tribute to Couperin himself in particular.   

This is reflected in the structure which imitates a Baroque dance suite.

As a preparatory exercise, Ravel had transcribed a forlane (an Italian folk dance) from the fourth suite of Couperin's Concerts royaux, and this piece invokes Ravel's Forlane structurally. The other movements are similarly based on Baroque forms, with the Toccata taking the form of a perpetuum mobile reminiscent of Alessandro Scarlatti. Ravel also revives Baroque practices through his distinctive use of ornamentation and modal harmony. Neoclassicism also shines through with Ravel's pointedly twentieth-century chromatic melody and piquant harmonies, particularly in the dissonant Forlane.

Written after the death of Ravel's mother in 1917 and of friends in the First World War, Le Tombeau de Couperin is a light-hearted, and sometimes reflective work rather than a sombre one which Ravel explained in response to criticism saying: "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence."

The first performance of the original piano version was given on 11 April 1919 by Marguerite Long, Joseph de Marliave's widow, in the Salle Gaveau in Paris.  

(Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_tombeau_de_Couperin