I was particularly impressed by (and jealous of) the double-note glissandi. Being as I am double-jointed, I could drag my fingers across the keyboard and get hardly any more sound than if I'd tried to use wet noodles to do it. The repeated notes are less intimidating; I can conceive of working up to them by doing plenty of repeated-note exercises within pieces by Liszt or even by Scarlatti. I've also discovered, being left-handed, that playing the repeated notes with my left hand helps the right hand "know" what to do to play them. On the subject of tempo, I don't think I'd feel "authorized" to make it so variable. In more than one place, Ravel does write
"tres rhythme", and I take that to mean that a little dancing to the music would not be out of the question. To bring out the best in the piece, I think that its context could be instructive. The English title is "Dawn Song of the Court Jester", so we have to imagine what it might have been like to be famously good at being such a person, in a time and place far from our own. In this piece, it is as if the jester's triumph comes by way of retelling a joke. The first time, it is distinctly risque; the chords turn ominously dissonant; what the jester has done comes across as perilously close to disrespect for the monarch. To accentuate this mood, at measure 102 or thereabouts, I would strive to make the chord with the F#, E# and G suddenly louder. The second time the joke is told, the punch line is different enough so that we get the impression that the jester has done a fabulous job defusing what had been a volatile situation; the crowd knows it and laughs with delight. But at the end of the piece, the inverted ninth chord relative to B minor returns, suggesting that the occupation of the court jester will always be fraught with risk; in a tragic way, he is always walking a tightrope.
So thanks, Ariel, for the performance.
Topic: Ravel, Alborada Del Gracioso, Ariel weiss, piano