Maurice Ravel
TZIGANE
A rhapsody for violin and orchestra, Tzigane ( French for gypsy) grew out of an after-hours gathering where the Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Aranyi played ravel gypsy melodies deep into the night. Ravel then studied Paganini's devilish Caprices for Solo Violin and immersed himself in more Hungarian folk music in preparation for the writing of Tzigane.
It opens with the violin playing solo - picture a brooding gypsy and a declamatory monologue of his/her life (passion, melancholy, memories, fantasy). The orchestra enters with a flourish, sounding not unlike a huge cimbalom, the hammered dulcimer of Hungary. If the opening is a monologue, well then here come the chorus - dancing, frenzied and festive, with quicksilver changes of tempo in the music.
Ravel exploits a wide range of violinistic effects in this music (rapid harmonics, left-hand pizzicato, quadruple stops) - virtuosity galore. Not bad, then, for a tickling of human ears through the friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat!
Bernard Clarke, RTÉ lyric fm
IF YOU LIKED TZIGANE . . .
. . . you'll probably also enjoy these concerts in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 2007/08 season, at the National Concert Hall or broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm.
Ravel's colourful and passionate Alborado del gracioso and soprano Ailish Tynan in his Shéhérazade. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0222/nso.html
More Spanish and gypsy flavours in Ravel's sultry and blazing Rapsodie espagnole and Falla's rich and mysterious Nights in the Gardens of Spain, evoking the jasmine-scented gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, a distant garden of the composer's imagination and a garden in the Sierra de Córdoba. With this, the elemental power of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0502/nso.html
MAURICE RAVEL, 1875-1937
Maurice Ravel was born to a Swiss Father and Basque mother in Cibourne, near Biarritz in France. He began learning piano aged 7 and began composing his own pieces in his early teens. His parents encouraged the talent and sent Maurice to the Conservatory in Paris where he studied under Gabriel Fauré - for fourteen years.
Influenced by classical composers including Mozart, Couperin and his contemporary Debussy, as well as jazz, Asian music and European folk music, Ravel wrote songs and song cycles, two piano concertos, chamber music and for solo piano, as well as orchestral pieces including the famous Bolero.
In the First World War, he drove a truck, having been turned down for the air force. In 1928, touring the United States, he met and became friends with George Gershwin.
In 1932, an apparently minor injury to his head in a car accident resulted in damage to his brain which meant that he could no longer compose and in 1937, following brain surgery, he fell into a coma and died. He never married
