Impressions in Blue: Ravel & Gershwin

Impressions in Blue: Ravel & Gershwin

In the mid-1920s, Maurice Ravel wrote a letter to the legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger's class was a mecca for composers, both young and old, and musicians from all over the world vied to study with her. But Ravel's letter wasn't on his own behalf. Instead, he urged Boulanger to take on a young student whom Ravel himself had declined to teach. He wrote:

"There is a musician here endowed with the most brilliant, most enchanting, and perhaps the most profound talent: George Gershwin. His worldwide success no longer satisfies him, for he is aiming higher. He knows that he lacks the technical means to achieve his goal. In teaching him those means, one might ruin his talent. Would you have the courage, which I wouldn't dare have, to undertake this awesome responsibility?"

Boulanger also declined to take Gershwin as a student, fearing, like Ravel, that she might damage his spontaneity and dynamic jazz sensibility. Whether or not the famous story is true (that Ravel turned down Gershwin's request to study with him by saying, "Why be a second-rate Ravel when you are a first-rate Gershwin?") we may never know. But the two composers were friendly, and formed something of a mutual admiration society.

Today, in this fourth collaboration with G. Henle Publishers in honor of their Ravel and Friends project, we're going to explore the connections between these two great composers: their friendship, their mutual influence, and the profound ways jazz infused itself into Ravel's music, particularly in his Violin Sonata and Piano Concerto in G. From the moment he discovered it, Ravel adored jazz, and like many French composers of the time, allowed its influence to permeate his work in ways both explicit and subtle. Join us!

Jaksot(283)

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 2

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 2

If you joined me last week, you heard about the severe intestinal illness that Beethoven suffered from during the year of 1825. Beethoven thought that he was near death; he was spitting up blood, in ...

8 Syys 202344min

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 1

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132, Part 1

I had long hesitated to write a show about any of Beethoven's late string quartets. These are pieces that professional quartets spend the better part of their careers grappling with, struggling with,...

31 Elo 202345min

Nielsen Symphony No. 4, "Inextinguishable"

Nielsen Symphony No. 4, "Inextinguishable"

At the top of the score for the Danish composer Carl Nielsen's 4th symphony, he wrote: "Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable." This could easily be the shortest podcast I've ever done. I could...

24 Elo 202359min

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream

The stories, legends, and myths about the trials and travails of composers lives are legion, like Beethoven's battles against fate, Mozart and Schubert's struggles with finances, Brahms' failures with...

17 Elo 202352min

Elgar Cello Concerto

Elgar Cello Concerto

Elgar's Cello Concerto was composed in the shadow of World War 1. It was a piece that marked a profound shift in Elgar's outlook on life and music, and was his last major work before a long silence ca...

10 Elo 202352min

Romeo and Juliet in Classical Music

Romeo and Juliet in Classical Music

The "love theme" from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture is one of the most famous themes in the history of Western Classical Music. The story it accompanies might be the most famous Wes...

3 Elo 202349min

Mozart Symphony No. 38, "Prague"

Mozart Symphony No. 38, "Prague"

Very few cities have had a relationship with a single person, especially a foreigner, like the city of Prague and its love affair with Mozart. Here's what Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist for som...

27 Heinä 202353min

Jean-Louis Duport Cello Concerto No. 4

Jean-Louis Duport Cello Concerto No. 4

Thank you to Nicole for sponsoring today's show on Patreon! Have you ever heard of Jean-Louis Duport? I imagine that unless you are a professional cellist, or someone who studied cello as a child, you...

20 Heinä 202343min

Suosittua kategoriassa Viihde

anni-jaajo
tuplakaak
grekovit
hei-baby-3
terveisia-perheesta
the-harlin-show
dear-shirly
antin-palautepalvelu
bella-table
antin-elokuvakerho
nonsensepodi
dear-shirly-ja-arttu
verhon-takaa
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
get-jassud
hollywood-love-stories-2
tahtitehdas
tervo-halme
everypodi
terkuin-jenna