PROGRAM NOTES MUTUAL ADMIRATION: GERSHWIN AND RAVEL, JANUARY 17, 2021 Maurice Ravel (Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées; died December 28, 1937, Paris) Violin Sonata Composed: 1923–27 Publication: 1927, Durand Dedication: Hélène Jourdan-Morhange (French violinist, 1892–1961) First performance: March 30, 1927, by violinist Georges Enescu and Ravel at the piano, Salle Erard, Paris Other works from this period: Chansons madécasses for voice, flute, cello, and piano (1925–26); Réves for voice and piano (1927); Fanfare (orchestra) for a ballet in one act, L’Eventail de Jeanne (1927); Bolero (ballet for orchestra, 1928). Approximate duration: 24 minutes Even his relatively modest oeuvre of approximately sixty works establishes the French composer Maurice Ravel as one of the early twentieth century’s most original and aesthetically refined musical voices. His instrumental writing in particular, from the breathtaking vivacity of his solo piano music to his brilliantly colorful orchestral works, reflects an innovative ear on par with his more celebrated contemporaries Debussy and Stravinsky. Such is likewise evident in his catalogue of chamber music—which, though comprising fewer than ten works, constitutes an essential part of the early twentieth-century French repertoire. Ravel moreover had a penchant for the exotic. In addition to the folk music of his native Basque region, he incorporated elements of musical traditions ranging from Indonesian gamelan to American jazz into his own work, resulting in a cosmopolitan air to match the zeitgeist of the Années folles. The Violin Sonata, composed between 1923 and 1927, was Ravel’s final chamber work, and captures the quintessence of the composer’s mature style. The Allegretto first movement’s opening measures unfold with a characteristic serenity: a percussive, staccato piano accompaniment contrasts the violin’s sinuous elegance. Ravel once opined that the violin and piano were inherently incompatible instruments and suggested that his Violin Sonata highlighted their sonic incongruity. Certainly, Ravel’s incisive exploration of each instrument’s timbral possibilities distinguishes the Sonata. The same instinct for instrumental texture that marks his body of solo piano music is in evidence here, as the piano writing features a rich palette of colors and striking sonic effects (pseudo-glissandi, et al.). The outer movements’ virtues notwithstanding, it is for the second movement “Blues” that the Sonata is best known. On a lecture tour of the United States, Ravel offered the following:

To my mind, the “blues” is one of your greatest musical assets, truly American despite earlier contributory influences from Africa and Spain. Musicians have asked me how I came to write “blues” as the second movement of my recently completed sonata for violin and piano. Here again the same process… is in evidence, for, while I adopted this popular form of your music, I venture to say that nevertheless it is French music, Ravel’s music, that I have written. Indeed, these popular forms are but the materials of construction, left to chance.

As the movement begins, Ravel evokes the sounds of a plucked banjo and crooning saxophone—but quickly extends the raw blues material to befit his own vernacular. In one striking passage, featuring the violin and piano engaged in a playful imitative dialogue above the steady banjo-plucking accompaniment, Ravel lends the exchange some spice by setting the two instruments in different keys. In 1928, at the height of his fame, George Gershwin toured Europe and met many of the day’s leading composers, including Ravel, whom he especially revered, and with whom he applied to study. The elder composer refused, explaining that his instruction could only adulterate Gershwin’s unique voice. Gershwin, by this time, had become very wealthy—licensing fees from Rhapsody in Blue alone earned him a quarter of a million dollars within ten years of its publication. When Ravel discovered the breadth of Gershwin’s success, he replied, “You should give me lessons.” In any event, Ravel’s Violin Sonata suggests that Gershwin’s admiration was reciprocated: one of the “Blues” movement’s recurring motifs bears more than a passing resemblance to the famous Gershwin tune “Fascinatin’ Rhythm.” At the movement’s climax, the music becomes suddenly agitated: the piano hammers out the Gershwin-esque tune in its bottom register, while the violin strums disquieted chords. The opening blues theme howls against this pungent new backdrop. Without warning, the music skedaddles back to an easy blues, and the movement ends with a lazy meow. The Perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion) finale evokes material from each of the Sonata’s first two movements. It begins with the piano’s percussive gesture from the opening Allegretto. The tempo quickens, and the violin sets off on a caffeinated joyride. Although the piano carries the movement’s essential musical material throughout, it is the brilliant, ornamental virtuosity of the violin that lends the finale its particular character.

—© 2021 Patrick Castillo

George Gershwin (b. September 26, 1898, Brooklyn, NY; d. July 11, 1937, Hollywood, CA) Five Selections from Porgy and Bess (arr. Heifetz) Composed: 1935 (arr. Heifetz: 1947) Approximate duration: 16 minutes By the time he turned thirty in 1928, George Gershwin was America’s most famous composer of both popular and concert music. More than seventy years after his death, he remains a vital part of America’s musical profile. Gershwin composed some of the most iconic tunes ever written: from the unforgettable melodies in Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris to standards like “Someone to Watch over Me” and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” which, beyond the scope of the musical world, have become hallmarks of American culture. The three-act opera Porgy and Bess, composed in 1935, “was Gershwin’s magnum opus,” writes music historian Richard Crawford, “nourished by more than a decade of technical study and a longheld interest in African-American experience.” The opera, based on DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy, is set in a black tenement in South Carolina. “Porgy and Bess is a folk tale,” Gershwin wrote. “Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work in the music I decided against the use of original folk material

because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music—and therefore, being in operatic form, Porgy and Bess becomes a folk opera.” In 1947, the violinist Jascha Heifetz transcribed a selection of numbers from Porgy and Bess for violin and piano: “Summertime,” “A Woman is a Sometime Thing,” “My Man’s Gone Now,” “Bess, You is my Woman Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and Tempo di Blues. The opera’s opening number, “Summertime,” is a young mother’s lullaby to her baby. Irresistibly sultry—“Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’, so hush, little baby, don’t you cry”—it has taken its place as essential repertoire for America’s greatest divas from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Janis Joplin. The biting “A Woman is a Sometime Thing” follows in Heifetz’s suite, and swings harder. “My Man’s Gone Now” and “Bess, You is my Woman Now” offer moments of tender lyricism. For the soulful “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Heifetz’s violin transcription calls on a variety of instrumental colors: abrupt changes in register, spiccato double-stops, and glassy harmonics. The suite’s ebullient finale (Tempo di Blues) is based on Porgy’s hopeful number “There a Boat dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York.”

—© 2021 Patrick Castillo

Maurice Ravel Tzigane Composed: 1922–24 Dedicated: Detailed in the notes below. First performance: April 1924, London, by violinist Jelly d’Arányi and pianist Henri Gil-Marchex Other works from this period: Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1922); L’Enfant et les sortileges (1920–25); Violin Sonata (1922–1927) Approximate duration: 10 minutes Paris in the 1920s was a flourishing cosmopolis, catalyzed by a convergence of the Western world’s visionary artists and thinkers. Gertrude Stein’s salon hosted fellow American émigrés Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound; Picasso kept a home in Montparnasse, where he fraternized with Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau. Musically, Paris marked the intersection of Gabriel Fauré’s nineteenth-century elegance, the Impressionist stylings adopted by his student Maurice Ravel, and France’s emerging avant-garde, epitomized by the irresistible sophistication of Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. Modern French musical life was further enriched by a steady influx of musical styles from around the world. Three decades earlier, at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, Debussy and Ravel were among those captivated by the sound of Indonesian gamelan—an epiphanic discovery with echoes in each composer’s string quartet. Ravel would remain fascinated with international musical traditions; an interest in Central European folk music comes to the fore in his penultimate chamber work, Tzigane for violin and piano. The work takes for its title a generic European word for “gypsy.” Ravel composed Tzigane in the early 1920s for Jelly d’Arányi, a Hungarian violinist who collaborated closely with a number of leading composers of her day. Her association with Ravel began with a performance in London of his Sonata for Violin and Cello. The pianist Gaby Casadesus gives an account of the post-concert festivities: “late in the evening, Ravel asked the Hungarian violinist to play some Gypsy melodies. After Mlle. d’Arányi obliged, the composer asked for one more melody, and then another. The Gypsy melodies continued until about 5

a.m., with everyone exhausted except the violinist and the composer.” At some point in the evening, Ravel had begun improvising piano accompaniments. By the time the revelry subsided in the early morning, Ravel had come up with the source material for Tzigane. The extended violin solo that begins the work contains, amidst its rhapsodic flourishes, a keening melody that serves as a thematic wellspring for the rest of the piece. With its first entrance, the piano evokes the cimbalom, or hammered dulcimer. For the premiere of Tzigane in 1924, Ravel worked with an instrument-maker to create an attachment to the piano called a luthéal. The luthéal added a variety of colors and registrations to the piano, so that the accompaniment would imitate the sound of traditional gypsy instruments. The remainder of the piece is driven by a series of elaborations on the violin melody introduced in the opening solo. The work is a compelling homage to gypsy music as well as to d’Aranyi’s particular mastery of the violin, but always filtered through Ravel’s unique sensibility. Ever a master of instrumental color, Ravel embellishes the violin part with various effects, such as harmonics, left-hand pizzicati, and other impressionistic flourishes.

—© 2021 Patrick Castillo