Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 11/07/2012, uploaded on 04/11/2013

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

As the Jazz Age swept America and Europe during the Roaring 20s, many composers turned to this style of music born of African-American spirituals as a new means of expression, blending it with the elements of the Classical tradition and new experimental techniques alike. Of course the name George Gershwin is synonymous with the classical-jazz fusion, but in post-war France, America’s jazz influenced Paris’s young avant-garde composers, such as Maurice Ravel. Ravel was intrigued by the melodies and rhythms of jazz and when he visited America during the latter part of the decade, he soaked in the music he heard in Harlem and New Orleans. His interest and use of jazz in his own compositions spanned several works during this time, reaching its pinnacle in his two concerti for piano composed during 1929-31. Just prior to that pair of works and his trip to America, he composed another important jazz-influenced composition—the Sonata for violin and piano.

The Sonata’s first movement is thinly textured and contrasts three different melodic ideas. Ravel himself thought the violin and piano two instruments ill-suited for each other, and this is to some extent played out in the contrasting melodic ideas of the movement. Much of the movement is serene, even ethereal at times, and builds to a solitary climax before slowly evaporating away. Entitled “Blues,” the middle movement’s composition actually predates Ravel’s trip to America and his exposure to the music of Harlem and New Orleans. Alongside its noticeable jazz idioms, Ravel makes use in this movement of 20^th century techniques such as bitonality. Lastly, the “Perpetuum mobile” finale incorporates themes from the preceding two movements.      Joseph DuBose

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Muarice Ravel   Violin Sonata

Maurice Ravel was brought up in the musical environment of late 19th century Paris, a climate characterized by the fashionable trend of the foreign and the exotic. In many of his compositions, Ravel pays tribute to different musical heritages, including jazz, gypsy music, and music from the East. The Sonata for Violin and Piano was a rather late composition in Ravel's life. The work progressed slowly as a result of ill health and took four years to complete. The first movement, Allegretto, is in traditional classical form. Elegant, poised, and sensual, the movement never stops, as if in a continual sweep. The second movement, Blues: Moderato, incorporates the technique of bitonality but takes its strongest inspiration from the Blues, as suggested by the title. Bitonality was a compositional method of using different keys for different instruments to give each a specific character. The Blues style component adds a melancholy character. In particular, Ravel utilized the melodic figures prominent in 1920's Blues. The brilliant last movement, a Perpetuum mobile, tests the limits of the violinist's virtuosity. Musical ideas from the first movement, particularly the countermotive, shine through the propulsive, uninterrupted 16th notes, which drive the work relentlessly to a blazing, elated end. Ravel dedicated the Sonata to Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, a violinist of great merit.

Taken from: http://www.gotomidori.com

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.