Some of the most original piano music in the first half of the 20th century was written by Maurice Ravel.  In the early Jeux d'eau (1901) and the great cycles Miroirs (1904-05) and Gaspard de la nuit (1908), Ravel developed what he himself called “a special type of writing for the piano,” and he defended his priority against critics who tried to trace his style to that of his older contemporary, Debussy.

Himself a highly competent pianist, Ravel, who was born 150 years ago this year, was a frequent performer of his own music (his performances survive on record).  Thus, it is not entirely surprising that he should want to write a concerto; what is surprising is that it took him so long to do so—especially since we know that he had toyed with the idea as early as 1906.  But those plans did not come to fruition, and it wasn’t until 1928, after his American tour, that he began to think about a concerto again.  In the wake of this tour—and the recent, wildly successful premiere of Boléro—Ravel wanted to make the most of his popularity, and decided to return to the concert stage as a pianist, as his friend Igor Stravinsky had done a few years earlier.  His work on a piano concerto for his own use was interrupted by pianist Paul Wittgenstein’s commission to write a concerto for the left hand alone.  Ravel worked on both concertos concurrently.  Asked by music critic Michel D. Calvocoressi to compare the two pieces, Ravel made the following statement:

Planning the two piano concertos simultaneously was an interesting experience.  The one in which I shall appear as the interpreter is a concerto in the truest sense of the word:  I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.  The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be light-hearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain great classics that their concertos were written not “for” but “against” the piano.  I heartily agree.  I had intended to entitle this concerto “Divertissement.” Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so, because the very title “Concerto” should be sufficiently clear.  

One might be surprised by the implication that Mozart’s concertos lack “profundity” or “dramatic effects.”  Ravel, however, understood those terms in a very specific way, and the real meaning of his remark was something he left unsaid.  By the “great classics” whose concertos are “against the piano” he probably meant Brahms (and possibly Tchaikovsky), whose expansive Romanticism did not appeal to him.  On the other hand, he had boundless admiration for Mozart, as had, among French composers before him, Camille Saint-Saëns; by mentioning these two names, Ravel indicated the artistic lineage he claimed as his own.

Ravel emphasized his debt to Mozart in the G-major Concerto, but the jazz influence is equally prominent in the piece, particularly in the first movement.  Ravel had been interested in jazz since the early 1920s when it first became the rage in the Parisian clubs that he frequented.  He had included a “Blues” movement in his Sonata for Violin and Piano, written between 1923 and 1927.  His enthusiasm grew considerably, however, after his visit to the United States.  

The first movement of the Concerto in G has many of the trappings of classical sonata form:  a succession of contrasting themes, and a clearly recognizable moment at which the recapitulation begins.  But the emphasis, as always with Ravel, is not so much on motivic development as on the juxtaposition of self-contained melodies.  The first one of these melodies is introduced by the piccolo in a very fast tempo; the piano accompanies it with lively figurations.  This theme has been said to suggest a Basque folk melody:  it probably contains material from a concerto on Basque themes Ravel had planned more than twenty years earlier.  (Ravel was born in the Basque region near the French-Spanish border.)  The tempo then slows down, and the high-pitched E-flat clarinet plays the first of several jazz-related motifs.  The movement, which remained true to Ravel’s original “Divertissement” idea, has a magnificent piano cadenza at the end, preceded by two other striking solo passages:  one for the harp, and one in which one woodwind instrument after another plays virtuoso flourishes against the sustained melody of the first horn.

The second movement opens with a long, expressive piano solo.  It is a single uninterrupted phrase that goes on for more than three minutes; after a while, the piano is joined by the flute, oboe, and clarinet.  A middle section follows, where the piano plays in a faster motion against the slow-moving melodies in the orchestra.  The initial long phrase then returns, played by the English horn, and accompanied by the crystalline thirty-second notes of the piano.  Ravel said that he had modelled this movement on the "Larghetto" from Mozart's Clarinet Quintet (K. 581); the connection is subtle, but can be clearly heard in the softly moving long phrases in 3/4 time and the rich ornamentation of the melodic lines.

The last movement is a lively romp in perpetual motion.  Like the first movement, it is a cavalcade of themes including allusions to marches, dances, and folk songs, and containing some jazzy “smears” in the trombones and some demanding solos for the woodwinds.  The high jinks continue until the timpani and the bass drum put an abrupt end to the music.

As he mentioned in the statement quoted above, Ravel was planning to play the piano part in his concerto himself.  Sadly, he was prevented from doing so by the onset of an illness that proved fatal.  He developed a progressively debilitating nervous disorder which made it impossible for him to play the piano, though in 1932, he could still conduct.  He entrusted the solo part to Marguerite Long, a great pianist who had been a close friend and dedicated performer of his works for many years, and they took the concerto on tour in some twenty European cities.  In January 1933, Ravel conducted the premiere of his Concerto for the Left Hand, and shortly afterwards finished the three songs Don Quichotte à Dulcinée for voice and orchestra.  But soon he was no longer able to read music or sign his name, much less to compose (though his hearing, his musical judgement, and his intelligence in general remained unimpaired).  One may understand his distress when, in the last year of his life, he burst into tears:  “I still have so much music in my head.  I have said nothing.  I have so much more to say.”