Roger Nichols - Ravel

(p. 125) 'May 1911 was possibly the most important month so far for Ravel's career. On the 9th Louis Aubert played the Valses nobles et sentimentales at a concert of the SMI, and ten days later L'Heure Espagnole was given its premiere at the Opera-Comique. In its continuing attempts to counteract the stuffy atmosphere of the Societe nationale, the SMI, encouraged by Koechlin, decided in its second year of life to promote a concert of anonymous works, for which the audience could then suggest authors on slips of paper. The Valses nobles et sentimentales were performed 'amid hoots and protests' and Ravel's authorship recognised 'by a tiny majority'. Aubert remembered that by the time he got to the 'Epilogue' he was competing against steady conversation. It is easy nowadays to laugh at guesses of Kodaly and Satie, but the Valses sound very little like Gaspard, Ravel's last work for piano, being far closer to Le Tombeau de Couperin or La Valse in taking their inspiration from dance. Ravel refers to 'a style that is simpler and cleaner, in which the harmony is harder and the lines of the music are made to show up.' He refers also to the example of Schubert - an influence that seems to have gone little futher than the title, although Roy Howat has pointed out that in the opening of the first Valse Ravel borrowed the rhythm of Schubert's first Valse noble, but shifted it one crotchet later so that Schubert's upbeat becomes Ravel's downbeat. Ravel's score may also have been influenced by Wanda Landowska's performance of some Schubert waltzes at the SMI concert on 6 March. As with Jeux d'eau Ravel prefaces the score with a quotation from Henri de Reginer, but whereas the earlier one evokes the mood of the piece, the heading to Valses nobles appears to be anti-evocative. 'le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile' (barely translatable as 'the delightful and unfading pleasure of a purposeless occupation').' [...] 'However, the objectivity of the quotation is brought into question when one reads the Regnier novel. Les recontres de M. de Breot, published in 1904, is the tale of an education sentimentale. At the very start of the novel, the young M. de Breot is transfixed by the sight of the beautiful Mme de Blionne dancing. "He imagined, not without a slight excitation, that because of the weight of her clothing and the movements she made in dancing, and although this was in the open air, she must be getting hot under her apparel as a Nymph, her skin humid and her body dripping. The sweat must be glistening on her limbs, running down her back and between her breasts and making her damp underclothes stick closely to her skin. And M. de Breot, as if her silver gown had in a moment become as transparent as the water of a fountain, suddenly imagined Mme de Blionne as though she were absolutely naked before him. He saw, in his mind's eye, her long legs, her ..." It is of course just possible that Ravel chose his quotation (the last words of the novel's avertissement or preface) without reading the book; but give that he and Regnier were friends, this seems most unlikely, all the more so since the final chapter of the novel begins with M. de Breot looking back over his adventures, just as the final movement of Ravel's work recalls previous ones. "... when M. de Breot thought of the various things that had happened during his stay in Paris, a city famous for offering all sorts of experiences, he could not help concluding that, for his part, he had observed merely ordinary events and none of the sort that transform a man. M. de Breot was still M. de Breot, for himself as for everyone else. It is true, even so, that his thoughts also dwelt on the memory of various fairly unusual characters who, when it came to it, had made it worth his while to leave the provinces, thanks to the interest [curiosite] of their acquaintance and the pleasure [agrement] of their company.' [...] (p. 127) Noble and sentimental? Neither nobility nor sentiment has an uninterrupted say for long (sentimentality doesn't come into it) and the studied ambivalence of the Valses has made pianists in general reluctant to play them. Furthermore they pose formidable problems of pedalling, of manual independence, and, strangest of all, of rubato, normally anathema to Ravel. In the many cases where phrases in 3/2 and 3/4 times are presented simultaneously, Ravel insisted that both rhythms must be heard. Perlemuter recalls that Ravel made him repeat the opening bars ten times, hand separately, and remarks on the composer's attitude: 'I remember with a certain emotion the sight of Ravel, sitting at his desk near the piano, score in hand, while he took me through these Valses. I had never seen his eyes so bright - he was so determined on being understood, on letting nothing slip by either in the notes or, just as much, in its interpretation. Through this passion for perfection in the letter, one found oneself in tune with the spirit.' The following year, on 22 April, the Valses were performed in Ravel's orchestral version as music to the ballet Adelaide, ou le langage des flers, to a story also of Ravel's devising. The orchestration is certainly among his most miraculous achievements and he profited from the availability of a large orchestra to add a cello countermelody in the fourth Valse.'