The Performer’s Voice: Performance and Analysis in Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche

https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.05.11.3/mto.05.11.3.leong_korevaar.html




On a fundamental level, the physical in this Concerto constrains the structural. Maurice Ravel felt that “the music of a Concerto . . . should be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects” but, because “in a work of this kind [the Concerto for the Left Hand] it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands, . . . I resorted to a style which is much nearer to the more solemn kind of traditional Concerto” (Orenstein 1990, 477). “The most formidable aspect of the problem . . . is to maintain interest in a work of extended scope while utilizing such limited means” (Orenstein 1990, 396). The left-handedness of the concerto, then, dictated its one-movement length, as well as its dramatic affect (in stark contrast to the divertissement character of Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto, written at the same time).

[22] The Concerto’s left-handedness is essential. Ravel’s disapproval of Alfred Cortot’s two-handed rendition (Orenstein 1990, 327) suggests as much, for the concerto exploits and stretches to their limits the possibilities of this single hand.

[23] In an essay entitled “Ravel ou l’esthétique de l’imposture” (Ravel or the Aesthetic of Imposture), Ravel’s student and biographer Roland-Manuel states that “il ne procède pas habituellement par métaphores, . . . mais volontiers par antithèses, allusions, . . . ”.(14) Ravel loves to exploit ambiguity, to fulfill expectations in unanticipated ways. For example, in Alborada del gracioso he both fulfills and fools the listener’s expectation of a trumpet by simulating the sound of a trumpet with a flute (Roland-Manuel 1925, 20–21). The left-hand concerto is about the left hand masquerading as two hands, and hence about the distance between the physical and the musical.