I’m currently reading Roger Nichols’ excellent study of the life and work of Maurice Ravel (Yale Uni Press, London, 2011). This comparatively early work “Jeux d’eau” is discussed at length and it really represents the first major work by the composer which establishes him as innovator par excellence. Here is a performance of the work by Sviatoslav Richter and it’s of a much faster tempo than those we generally hear today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6XI7sIz7CU
The manuscript sent to the printers bears a daunting metronome mark of quaver = 152. However, even the revised quaver = 144 of the first edition is not for the faint-hearted. Ravel's particular insistence on regularity of speed flies in the face of much that has been condoned in the name of rubato.
Corrections Ravel made to his earliest manuscript include some that reduce the chords of the left hand so that the proportions of overtones to notes actually sounded is increased. Nichols claims that Ravel’s “conception of the piano lies somewhere between the ‘melody’ instrument of Chopin and the box of hammers and strings it really is” (39). Brilliant.
In a letter of 8 April, 1901 to his friend the composer Florent Schmitt, Ravel wrote of “the Faust” of Liszt; 'this astonishing symphony containing, at an earlier date and what is more so much better orchestrated, the most outstanding themes of the Ring'. Such an opinion ran clean against the orthodoxy of the time, but in Liszt Ravel found more than a superb orchestrator. The mixture of elan, virtuosity and passion in Liszt’s piano music excited him. The title “Jeux d’eau” obviously invites comparison with Liszt’s “Jeux d’eau a la villa d’Este” and Ravel, asked how his should be played answered “like Liszt, of course”.
Writing in 1906 to a Pierre Lalo, Ravel wrote “Sir, you go on at some length about a rather individual style of writing which you claim was discovered by Debussy. Now, my “Jeux d’eau” appeared at the beginning of 1902 and at that time Debussy had written only the three pieces for the piano (“Pour le piano”). I need hardly say to you that it is a work for which I have a fervent admiration, but from the pianistic standpoint it says nothing really new”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6XI7sIz7CU
The manuscript sent to the printers bears a daunting metronome mark of quaver = 152. However, even the revised quaver = 144 of the first edition is not for the faint-hearted. Ravel's particular insistence on regularity of speed flies in the face of much that has been condoned in the name of rubato.
Corrections Ravel made to his earliest manuscript include some that reduce the chords of the left hand so that the proportions of overtones to notes actually sounded is increased. Nichols claims that Ravel’s “conception of the piano lies somewhere between the ‘melody’ instrument of Chopin and the box of hammers and strings it really is” (39). Brilliant.
In a letter of 8 April, 1901 to his friend the composer Florent Schmitt, Ravel wrote of “the Faust” of Liszt; 'this astonishing symphony containing, at an earlier date and what is more so much better orchestrated, the most outstanding themes of the Ring'. Such an opinion ran clean against the orthodoxy of the time, but in Liszt Ravel found more than a superb orchestrator. The mixture of elan, virtuosity and passion in Liszt’s piano music excited him. The title “Jeux d’eau” obviously invites comparison with Liszt’s “Jeux d’eau a la villa d’Este” and Ravel, asked how his should be played answered “like Liszt, of course”.
Writing in 1906 to a Pierre Lalo, Ravel wrote “Sir, you go on at some length about a rather individual style of writing which you claim was discovered by Debussy. Now, my “Jeux d’eau” appeared at the beginning of 1902 and at that time Debussy had written only the three pieces for the piano (“Pour le piano”). I need hardly say to you that it is a work for which I have a fervent admiration, but from the pianistic standpoint it says nothing really new”.