At their meeting in 1928, George Gershwin famously asked Ravel for composition lessons. Having ascertained the fees his prospective pupil was able to command, the Frenchman observed that it was he who ought to be taking the lessons. Which in a sense he then did, since the Concerto in G and to a lesser extent the Concerto for Left Hand both borrow extensively from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F.These two paragraphs returned to my mind on Saturday night, while I was listening to Martha Argerich play Maurice Ravel's 1931 G major piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony, because, for the first time the influences of both "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and the Gershwin "full" concerto (1925) were crystal clear. I suspect that this insight was due as much to Michael Tilson Thomas' conducting, since he has a real feel for just about every aspect of the "Gershwin sound," as to the "touch" that Argerich brought to her solo work. This is not to say that he neglected the "Ravel sound," since Ravel could invoke orchestral colors far beyond those of Gershwin's imagination. "Rhapsody in Blue," after all, was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, best known for his Grand Canyon Suite (1931). However, there is a clear homage to Gershwin's jazzy rhetoric in the G major concerto, which reveals that, when it came to some of Gershwin's best riffs, Ravel was an extremely acute listener!
That point has surely never been more clearly made than in this final concert in Manchester's Piano 2009 Festival, consisting of those four very works. And the fact that the two soloists were of such contrasting temperaments served only to make the juxtaposition more fascinating.
For reasons I discussed (at great length) on my blog, this work felt a bit out of place on a program that juxtaposed it with the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, György Ligeti, and Franz Liszt; but both Argerich and Thomas demonstrated that this concerto can stand on its own in any company!
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