Piano Forum

Ondine is much harder than Jeux d'eau, in many ways.  First of all, although Ravel's style was established by Jeux d'eau (according to him), Ondine is more freely composed.  Whereas Jeux d'eau has easily divisible rhythms, Ondine's rhythms are much more fluid and require a very sophisticated rhythmic sense.

Ondine has many physical demands that Jeux d'eau lacks, not the least of which is the difficult opening figuration.

Jeux d'eau is very difficult, no doubt about it.  It's a fascinating piece that shows Ravel's unique combination of intellectual and visceral.  I think the intellectual in Ravel is often overlooked.  Notice in Jeux d'eau how using straightforward note values, he achieves lots of rhythmic complexity and subtlety. 

In the opening, for instance, you have eighth notes in the left hand, then sixteenths in the right, then thirty seconds.  Over all of this, there is harmonic rhythm of dotted quarter (E⁷) and eighth (A⁷).  The first bars are instructive for the way he deals with rhythm in the whole piece.  He has a harmonic rhythm superimposed over a certain number of beats, and those beats are subdivided and subdivided over and over again. 

Bad performances of Ravel are usually performances that aren't harmonic; they sound thin or fingery; or they have too much pedal, over-compensating for the lack of harmonic playing with the keyboard alone.  It's the notion of a superimposed, subtle harmonic rhythm that many don't grasp.

Walter Ramsey