About this Piece

Ravel began work in 1923 on a sonata for violin and piano and found himself intrigued not by the union but by the independence of the instrumental parts. Ravel described the piano and violin of his sonata as “essentially incompatible instruments, which not only do not sink their differences, but accentuate incompatibility to an even greater degree.” Always the intellectual and the consummate craftsman, Ravel proved his argument with a work in which the two instruments are separate but equal, reacting to each other dispassionately, yet each maintaining its distinct identity.

The first movement begins with the piano presenting a flowing melody having a distinctive quick step that interrupts the even motion. The violin takes up the idea while the piano falls into a repeated broken octave pattern in the treble. An impudent little figure in the bass joins, destined to make many appearances throughout the movement and a reappearance at the beginning of the third movement. The music unfolds with remarkable textural economy; for example, in one section the piano accompanies an expressive violin melody with only an extended series of archaic two-note figures (simultaneously sounded notes a fifth apart).

The second movement, titled “Blues,” is a slightly self-conscious nod to the American idiom Ravel greatly admired. Syncopations, honky-tonk rhythmic patterns, flatted thirds and sevenths, violin slides, and an allusion to the dialogue between the Teapot and the Cup in his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges are some of the elements that make up the Blues.

Starting with a remembrance of the first movement’s cheeky figure, the finale finds the violin taking off, locomotive style, on a perpetual motion of dizzying virtuosic activity, while the piano works its jaunty rhythmic way through a variety of material, including some echoes from the earlier movements. The design is highly original, the effect riveting and hypnotic.

—Orrin Howard