Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Maurice Ravel

Tzigane

 

Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane bears the eloquent subtitle, Rapsodie de concert pour violon et piano. Indeed, the work iseminently virtuosic, and it is not by chance that it was written for a great soloist of the day, the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi, who gave its first performance at London’s Aeolian Hall on 26 April 1924; Ravel later prepared a version for violin and orchestra. Tzigane begins with a long cadenza for solo violin, which introduces a series of variations that make up a sort of sampler of technical difficulties for this stringed instrument – difficulties worthy of Paganini’s Caprices: harmonics, double-stops, pizzicatos, complicated passages in fast tempos, and so on. The whole piece is clearly Magyar-style in its melodic inflections, halfway between Liszt and Bartók, and the writing purposely guarantees that the piece, if played with maximum bravura, will have the effect of leading the listener to applaud at the end.

Performers

Performance