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!

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6 Helmi 202040min

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30 Tammi 202055min

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This week, I'm interviewing 3 people who are making real change in the classical music business. Today, I talk with Aubrey Bergauer, the former Executive Director of the California Symphony, and Loren...

22 Loka 201955min

Sticky Notes Mailbag!

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27 Kesä 20191h 2min

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132 (Part 2)

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132 (Part 2)

This week we're diving into one of the great movements ever written in Western Music with the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 132 quartet. This is a movement that explores Beethoven's contradictory r...

13 Kesä 201944min

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132 (Part 1)

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132 (Part 1)

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

6 Kesä 201945min

How to Build an Orchestra w/Joshua Roman

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I was thrilled to be joined by Joshua Roman, cellist, composer, and curator. The core of our discussion centers on building an orchestra from the ground up. That is, not taking over an existing orches...

25 Tammi 201951min

Deborah Borda, President of the New York Philharmonic

Deborah Borda, President of the New York Philharmonic

Of all the interviews I've done this year on Sticky Notes, this might be my favorite. I sat down a few weeks ago with Deborah Borda, the new CEO and President of the New York Philharmonic, to talk ab...

21 Helmi 201849min

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