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Home > Composers Datebook > Ravel's Duo


	Podcast:		Composers Datebook
	Episode:		Ravel's Duo
	Category:		Health
	Duration:		00:01:59
	Publish Date:		2018-04-06 00:00:00
	Description:		In 1920, a French publisher commissioned several works in memory of Claude Debussy, who had died two years earlier. Maurice Ravel’s contribution was a single-movement piece for violin and cello. The next year, Ravel expanded this music into a 4-movement sonata he titled “Duo” —perhaps thinking of the “Duo” for the same two instruments by Zoltán Kodály. And if Ravel’s music at times sounds a little Hungarian, perhaps another reason was his meeting with Béla Bartók around the time he was working on this piece. In any case, Ravel was trying something new and different, and said so: "I believe this sonata marks a turning point in the evolution of my career. In it, thinness of texture is pushed to the extreme. Harmonic charm is renounced, coupled with an increasingly conspicuous reaction in favor of melody." Violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange and cellist Maurice Maréchal gave the premiere performance of Ravel’s Duo at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on today’s date in 1922. They had to rehearse harder than usual, and Ms. Jourdan-Morhange recalled “[We] went over it again and again till we were giddy." "It's complicated,” she told Ravel, “The cello has to sound like a flute and the violin like a drum. It must be fun writing such difficult stuff, but no one's going to play it except virtuosos!” “Good,” replied Ravel a smile, “then I won’t be murdered by amateurs!”
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