Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)

Maurice Ravel with Jacques Février playing the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in Paris in 1937

The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major was composed by Maurice Ravel between 1929 and 1930, concurrently with his Piano Concerto in G. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I.

Wittgenstein gave the premiere with Robert Heger and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on 5 January 1932. Before writing the concerto, Ravel enthusiastically studied the left-hand études of Camille Saint-Saëns. The first French pianist to perform the work was Jacques Février, chosen by the composer himself.

Structure

Ravel is quoted in one source as saying that piece is in only one movement^[1] and in another as saying the piece is divided into two movements linked together.^[2] According to Marie-Noëlle Masson, the piece has a tripartite structure: Slow-Fast-Slow, instead of the usual Fast-Slow-Fast (like Vivaldi's concertos). Whatever the internal structure may be, the 18-19 minute piece negotiates several sections in various tempi and keys without pause. Towards the end of the piece, some of the music of the early slow sections is overlayed with the faster music, such that two tempi occur simultaneously.

Excerpt from Piano Concerto in which two themes are presented simultaneously in different time signatures.

The concerto begins with the double basses softly arpeggiating an ambiguous harmony (E-A-D-G) being the background to an unusual solo of the contrabassoon. Although these notes are later given great structural weight, they are also the four open strings on the double bass, creating the illusion at the start that the orchestra is still tuning up. As is traditional in a concerto, the thematic material is presented first in the orchestra and then echoed by the piano. Not as traditional is the dramatic piano cadenza which first introduces the soloist and prefigures the piano's statement of the opening material. This material includes both an A and a B theme, though the B theme receives little exposure. An additional theme introduced at the beginning exhibits several similarities to the Dies Irae chant.

An excerpt from the faster section, sometimes referenced as the scherzo, is shown in the example. Throughout the piece, Ravel creates ambiguity between triple and duple rhythms. This example highlights one of the more notable instances of this.

Reception and legacy

The piece was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, a concert pianist who had lost his right arm in the First World War. Although at first Wittgenstein did not take to its jazz-influenced rhythms and harmonies, he grew to like the piece. Ravel's other concerto, the Piano Concerto in G, is more widely known and played.

The piece is featured prominently in "Morale Victory," an episode from the 8th season of the long-running American television series M*A*S*H. Major Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) uses it and Wittgenstein's story to convince a drafted concert pianist (James Stephens), whose right hand has been permanently injured in combat, not to give up his musical gift despite his wounds.

The concerto is well-known in the Netherlands because of its use as the opening theme of the popular travel TV show "De Wereld van Boudewijn Buch" that ran between 1988 and 2001.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ Daily Telegraph, 11 July 1931, p. 364
2. ^ Le Journal, 14 January 1933, p. 328

• Kelly, Barbara. "Ravel, Maurice," Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://grovemusic.com> (subscription access)
• Masson, Marie-Noëlle. "Ravel: Le Concerto pour la main gauche ou les Enjeux d'un Néo-Classicisme," Musurgia 5, no. 3-4 (1998): 37-52.

Further reading

• Ivry, Benjamin (2000), Maurice Ravel: a Life, New York: Welcome Rain, ISBN 1566491525, OCLC 44172900 
• Lau, Sandra Wing-Yee. The art of the left hand: a study of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand and a bibliography of the repertoire. Diss. Stanford University, 1994.
• Mawer, Deborah, ed. (2000), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, Cambridge Companions to Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521648564, OCLC 59558270  LCC ML410.R23 C36 2000
• Perlemuter, Vlado and Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Ravel according to Ravel. Frances Tanner, trans. London: Kahn & Averill, 1970.