pour violon et piano

RAVEL
sonateso
pour violon et pian
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B
Régis Pasquier
Maurice ravel
(1875-1937)
sonates
pour violon et piano
Brigitte Engerer- Régis Pasquier
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gers. In amusing himsel
Sonorous games and wa
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confronting two instrum
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to his legendary pencha
Ravel remains faithful
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side
ious and playful works,
or of technique. Both ser
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by side, without any
nt et
of the composer of L’Enfa
ambiguity quite typical
les Sor tilèges!
HMA 1951364
How can one avoid seeing in Ravel’s works for violin and piano a certain spirit of defiance, an
almost ambiguous pleasure in writing for two instruments he regarded as incompatible with one
another? It would, therefore, not be too far-fetched to interpret the com­position of each piece
as the result of a particular experiment, a specific reso­lution of this instrumental contradiction.
Whatever the case may be, these works – if one includes his own transcriptions – occupy a
relatively important place in his output of chamber music.
A recent discovery, the Sonata for violin and piano, called ‘posthumous’, was probably played in
1897, the year of its composition, by the composer himself at the piano and Georges Enesco,
his fellow-student in Fauré’s class at the Paris Conservatoire. But it remained in manuscript
until 1975 when it was finally deemed worthy of publication on the occasion of the centenary
of Ravel’s birth. The ‘official’ première took place in New York in the same year.
This Sonata is in a single, extended movement, an Allegro moderato, with the indication ‘très
doux’. In this youthful essay Ravel wrote his first work in which the two instruments, which he
did not yet think of as being incompatible, confront one another. The well-wrought and carefully
proportioned structure of the work bears certain traces of the imprint of Fauré and Franck. But
beyond the lyrical effusiveness, the emphatic crescendi and the somewhat insipid melodic
substance that betray their model, we already discern a number of individual turns, such as a
metrical irregularity, and the first signs of a tart and highly subtle harmonic language.
Much later in date, the second Sonata is also very different in style from the so-called
‘posthumous’ one. With this work of accomplished maturity and perfect mastery Ravel put a
full-stop to his production of chamber music.
It was long in the making. After a preliminary sketch in 1922, Ravel worked at it irregularly,
finally completing it in 1927. On account of ill health, the dedicatee, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange,
was unable to play the first performance of the work herself on 30 May 1927 and was replaced
by Georges Enesco with Ravel at the piano.
Here Ravel takes pleasure in stressing the essential incompatibilities between an instrument
in which the strings are bowed and one in which they are struck, as if the better to put
their heterogeneity to the test by exploiting the contrasts of timbre. The Sonata is in three
movements, with a countering of the severity of the form by the introduction of a whimsical
reference to jazz (2nd movement), ‘Blues’ and the unexpected emergence of a moto perpetuo
(3rd movement).
The rather large first movement is in the traditional sonata-movement form with an exposition
– development – recapitulation. It is characterized by the richness of its thematic material –
no fewer than four main motifs (in which, here and there, one catches a hint of ideas that
were to fuel the coming turbulences of L’Enfant et les Sortilèges), material that will find a
point of balance and a luminous eloquence in the middle section, the development. The brief
recapitulation ­follows in the shape of the purified lyricism of a cantabile given to the violin
which soars above the first two themes and remains aloof in its sustained, tenuous sound
while the piano surreptitiously picks out a slender fugato on the flowing first theme.
1
RAVEL
sonateso
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In the Blues Ravel, with a sly and somewhat insolent smile, seems to delight in exasperating us
with his insistent glissandi, systematic syncopations and rhythmic ostinatos, features which,
by becoming inflexibly rigid, afford glimpses of a sort of subterranean rage... Moreover, he
does not deprive himself of the pleasure of making the instruments emit sounds that evoke
those of the banjo or the saxophone. The use of bitonality further accentuates the grating
character and the sometimes disabused inflexions of this Blues. But let there be no mistake:
in spite of its American character, he had, according to his own terms, written a piece of
thoroughly ‘French music, by Ravel’!
The last movement gives pride of place to the violin whose quivering virtuosity is like a ‘Flight
of the Bumble-bee’ à la Ravel, while the piano, retiring into the background, obstinately and
somewhat aggressively dwells on incessant remin­iscences of the earlier movements.
***
In writing the Deux Mélodies Hébraïques in May 1914, commissioned by Alvina Alvi (a soprano
at the Saint Petersburg Opera whom Ravel no doubt met in London in 1913), he was pursuing
the process already begun with the C
­ hanson Écossaise (1907), the Chansons Grecques (1909)
and the Chansons Populaires (1910), and which was in the nature of an exercise in style. It
is known that ­Ravel’s attraction to primitive modal scales and exotic tone colours left a deep
imprint on the aesthetic of his vocal music. In this case the difficulty lay in bringing out the
primitive magic of Jewish melody while integrating it into the ­Ravelian musical world.
Kaddisch, the first of the Mélodies Hébraïques, is a liturgical chant, a prayer for the dead that
originated in the 13th century. Ravel was to make several transcriptions of this long lament of
spellbinding unfurling melismata, omitting the Aramaic words and retaining only the musical
substance. Although he enlarged the vision of the piece in the orchestral version, here he
returns to a more contemplative expressiveness, giving the heart-rending melody to the violin
while the extremely sparse piano accompaniment punctuates it with a few arpeggios and
discreet chords.
***
In Tzigane (1924) Ravel drew on Hungarian Gypsy folk music. This Rhapsodie de concert was
dedicated to the Hungarian violinist, Jelly d’Aranyi, who gave the first performances of both
versions (the second is orchestral). It is a work that makes terrifying demands on the violinist’s
virtuosity, exploiting all the technical resources of the instrument in a veritable resurgence of
‘the devil’s fiddle’, while retaining the highly coloured sonorities of Gypsy music : a profusion
of pizzicati, glissandi, double-stopping, cadenzas, sudden accelerations, etc. A number of free
sequences succeed each other. It opens with a long, slow cadenza with a wild, seductive air
of the strolling player, and a hint of parody. It then becomes more animated (Allegro) with a
Bartók-like folk theme and a series of variations, leading into a Meno vivo grandioso. The motif
grows increasingly impatient in an acceleration of the rhythm and a destabilizing of the tonality
before exhausting itself in a paroxysm of rage.
***
Spain was at the very heart of Ravel’s foreign influences. And it was from the Spain that this
native of the Basque region never ceased celebrating throughout his life that the Habanera
was to come. The characteristically regular rhythm endows this dance with a nonchalance and
a sort of timelessness. Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera was originally composed for two
pianos in 1895. Fritz Kreisler made the present transcription for violin and piano. This short
piece was not only one of the composer’s first published works, but also one of which he
was particularly proud and which he accorded a decisive significance: ‘I consider this work
as containing the germ of several elements that were to become predominant in my later
work’, he was to declare one day. The throbbing character of the pedal point, the languorous
inflexions and convolutions of the violin, the sensuousness of the sonorities and the equivocal
tonality suffuse this piece with a bewitching charm. It is like the expression of pure musical
hedonism.
***
Taking up the exercise in style in a different way and returning to the pleasure of a playful
challenge within self-imposed limits, Ravel addressed a delicately graceful tribute to his teacher
Fauré in 1922, at the suggestion of the Revue Musicale for a special edition devoted to Fauré.
Using the same system in the Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, Fauré’s name was transposed into
Anglo-Saxon notation (G, A, B flat, D, B flat, E, E / F, A, G, D, E) which furnished the principal
motif for this short piece. It is first stated by the muted violin, then the piano takes over in a
different key while the violin continues the countermelody in its own key. A subtle counterpoint
links the two instruments before the Berceuse ends on an indecisive rocking figure, enveloped
in a veil of unreality.
Élisabeth Bourgogne
Translation James O. Wootton
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