I have always claimed that Ravel was a unique composer because he was able to craft a particular kind of beauty: a joyous one. I feel that whenever I listen to his music, pleasure comes in two steps: I get delighted by its beauty first, and then I feel happy after hearing it.
Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand works as a magnificent example of what I am talking about: it is fairly easy to listen, it is enticing, it is captivating.
Nonetheless, this concerto is anything but simple. Even when it is certainly not as demanding as a 12-tone piece, it is intrinsically complex. Its structure is polyrhythmic to begin with, meaning that several pulses impose on top of each other -all at once.
The piece typically lasts only around 18 minutes but it is so dense and it gets so frantic at times that it feels longer. In fact, Ravel wanted to give the illusion that his concerto was played by two hands, which may explain the perplexing density of notes in certain instances.
Written between 1929 and 1930, the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand acted as some sort of companion piece to his other Piano Concerto (the decidedly brighter and ultimately more popular written in G Major), and it was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who lost his right arm in the Great War and who had the ambition (and the funds) to maintain his soloist career by commissioning concerts from the most renowned composers of the era.
Ravel and Wittgenstein collaboration didn’t go smoothly. The pianist didn’t really like the piece at first, but after practising it he was able to grow a liking to it. The disagreements between the composer and the pianist started when the former heard the latter play the concerto for the first time in a private concert.
According to Ravel, Wittgenstein took the outrageous liberty of changing the harmonies, tempi and even adding a few arpeggios in the cadenza. Ravel was upset. Let us not forget that the French composer was known for demanding precision from his interpreters and did not welcome any sort of creativity on their behalf.
Wittgenstein acquiesced to playing the concerto exactly as it was composed, and even when the dispute was solved, it left a sour taste amongst the musicians. Afterwards, for instance, Wittgenstein complained that the piano rarely interacted with the orchestra, which is why many scholars have considered the concerto to be written not for the piano but against the piano.
As to my favorite recordings of the piece, you can’t definitely go wrong with the one made by Krystian Zimerman and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez. You should also check out the ones recorded by Andrei Gavrilov and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle; and by Claire Chevallier and the Anima Eterna Brugge Orchestra conducted by Jos Van Immerseel.
After discovering this concerto I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. As with pretty much any other Ravel piece, I feel as if I want to retain this music and keep it close to me for the rest of my life, so I really hope that you give it a try and allow yourself to embrace this marvelous type of beauty, the one that only Ravel was able to achieve.
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