0:00

I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical

0:06

in Washington, we're your guide to classical

0:08

music. In this episode, I'm joined

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by WETA Classical's Linda Carducci,

0:13

and we're diving into one of the most difficult

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works in the entire piano repertoire,

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Gaspard de la nuit by Maurice Ravel.

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It's not just difficult, but the poems

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they are based on are quite a fright too.

0:25

So, we explore some of that accompanying poetry,

0:28

how Ravel creatively brings it to life

0:30

in the music, and we talk about what exactly

0:32

makes it so difficult. Well,

0:38

Linda, we probably could not have timed this

0:40

recording of this work by Ravel

0:43

any better. I mean, he turns

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150 today, right?

0:47

I mean, it's March 7th. We usually don't

0:49

say when we record things, and we totally

0:52

planned this, right? We can fib. This was totally

0:54

planned, not fortuitous at all. But what

0:58

a great time to talk about Ravel, and I think we're

1:00

going to hear more Ravel throughout

1:02

2025 as we celebrate more of

1:04

his 150th.

1:06

I'm thrilled because I've always

1:08

been a Ravel fan. I think sometimes

1:10

he's not played enough. His music

1:12

is so inventive and innovative,

1:15

not quite like Debussy, who was a contemporary,

1:17

an older contemporary, but still, Ravel

1:19

has a lot of value to be discovered.

1:23

We're going to discover in this work Gaspard

1:25

de la nuit, some pretty

1:27

difficult things. This is in

1:29

three movements, and each is based

1:32

on a poem from Gaspard de la nuit,

1:35

written in 1836 by

1:38

Aloysius Bertrand. To

1:40

translate, Linda, I guess it's like gaspar

1:43

is French for Caspar, not the ghost,

1:45

but rather an ancient Persian

1:47

name for treasurer. So, like someone in charge

1:49

of the night with this.

1:50

Yeah, that's right. So, gaspar in this

1:53

sense is not really a proper noun, like a name

1:55

like Caspar the Friendly Ghost. It's more

1:57

of gaspar as an identification,

2:00

a noun of a treasurer, a treasurer

2:02

of the night, someone who holds the night's

2:04

secrets. I think it's important to

2:06

just keep thinking about night as we talk

2:09

about this entire work because night

2:11

overshadows it a little bit.

2:14

This is a writer I'm not really

2:16

familiar with at all, but from all

2:18

of my reading and stuff on this,

2:20

I think a quick comparison

2:22

to maybe something

2:25

more relatable to us would be like Edgar Allan

2:27

Poe, creepy, macabre

2:30

type elements.

2:31

Yes. Some of these were designed to be musings

2:34

that occurred at night, musings about life

2:37

and love. What is art? That's

2:40

some of the things that were discovered

2:42

within these poems. They're also

2:44

somewhat based in the medieval

2:46

time. So, that adds another little maybe

2:48

layer of creepiness to them.

2:50

Okay. I mean, a lot of those old fairy

2:52

tales had pretty scary themes

2:54

in them. This piece is scary

2:56

for pianists. I read Linda

2:58

on looking at piano forms. I've

3:00

seen things like this piece is honestly

3:03

insane. Another said,

3:05

talking about the third movement, Scarbo is a

3:07

nightmare. Then I found, I think it

3:09

was like a 14- year- old, a teenager

3:12

talking about their skills and what they play

3:14

and basically asking, " Am I ready to play

3:16

this?" One of the replies was no

3:18

one is ready ever.

3:19

When someone compiles

3:22

a list of the most difficult piano pieces of

3:24

all time throughout history, this is going

3:26

to be very near the top of the list, if

3:28

not number one.

3:33

We'll jump into the first movement now, Ondine.

3:37

I think part of the magic of Ravel

3:39

is his creative voicing, the

3:41

harmonies, the way he's able to blur lines

3:44

at times. Right from the start

3:46

of this one, that's what we get. We get

3:48

this ethereal sound

3:50

that lures us in. Perhaps

3:53

it is a water nymph visiting at

3:55

night, and there's an accompanying poem.

3:57

Maybe you can read some of this, Linda.

3:59

Sure. Listen. Listen. It

4:01

is I, it is Ondine, who

4:04

brushes drops of water on the resonant

4:06

panes of your windows, lit by

4:08

the gloomy rays of the moon. Here

4:11

in gown of watered silk,

4:14

the mistress of the Chateau gazes from

4:16

her balcony on the beautiful starry

4:18

night and the beautiful sleeping lake.

4:22

The sound that we hear right from

4:24

the beginning I think is ethereal because

4:26

of just some things he's doing in the music. Well,

4:28

he's doing an incredible amount of things in

4:31

the music, but one thing we can look at in the beginning,

4:33

he has a C sharp major chord that

4:36

alternates with like a

4:38

flattened sixth. What he's

4:40

doing here, what it sounds like when he's alternating

4:42

between these, it's giving it like a major

4:45

chord and then an augmented chord

4:47

sounds. The harmony is blurred in a way

4:49

that feels like water rippling

4:51

around.

4:53

By the way, this is a device that Ravel

4:55

uses sometimes, not just in Gaspard

4:57

de la nuit, but with his other work, augmented

5:00

chords. It gives sometimes an exotic

5:02

interesting sound.

5:04

Yes. The theme

5:06

that begins is underneath

5:09

this, not just in volume, but

5:11

also like in the register. It's literally below.

5:13

Usually, the accompaniment is lower

5:15

and the melody is higher,

5:18

but it's flipped and it sounds like something

5:20

beautiful underneath the surface

5:22

of the water. He eventually

5:24

transposes it to different places,

5:27

brings it up higher, but it's all contained within like

5:29

a perfect fifth too.

5:31

It's amazing. So, what are we hearing

5:33

and what are we seeing? What world

5:36

is Ravel creating with this? Is

5:38

it really a water nymph that we're creating,

5:41

or is it just our imagination that we think

5:43

we see something underneath that water as

5:45

the water ripples and there are different colors of

5:47

it?

5:48

Yeah, when you see something like a big shadowy figure

5:51

and then it's actually like just hundreds of

5:53

fish scattering in a different direction. I like that. Now

5:56

the first movement has the longest poem

5:59

with it too, but we're

6:01

not going to go into the entire thing. We'll put a link

6:03

on the show notes page. But Linda, what else

6:05

is happening here within

6:08

the music that is being

6:10

brought out from the poem?

6:12

Well, he's creating a world of fantasy, of course. He's

6:14

creating, based on one

6:16

of the poems in this collection you and I were just talking about,

6:19

a man who dreams. In

6:22

his dream, he thinks he sees a

6:24

water nymph underneath the

6:26

surface and she's calling out

6:29

to him. Now, a water nymph were

6:31

minor female characters in ancient Greek

6:33

folklore, and generally,

6:35

they personified things in nature like water

6:37

or forests or trees or something like

6:39

that. So, here, this

6:42

man, we think he's dreaming,

6:45

thinks he sees a water nymph and she's

6:47

trying to entrap him. She's flirtatious with

6:49

him. She goes through all these different physical

6:52

movements within the water to flirt

6:54

with him. She's teasing him and she's seducing him.

6:58

She then claims she loves him. She wants

7:00

him to come to her water castle

7:02

and she wants to give him her ring.

7:05

Sounds nice.

7:05

It does, until he rejects

7:08

her.

7:08

Okay.

7:09

Then things turn a little turbulent because

7:11

she doesn't take the rejection well

7:14

or maybe she does. Maybe she's mocking

7:16

him.

7:18

Well, we will get to that rejection.

7:20

It is such a moment in

7:22

music, talking

7:24

about the augmented aspects

7:26

that he brings into this and other works, as you

7:28

said. Part of it is also

7:31

he's alternating between these two chords,

7:33

but then he goes to more scale like passages

7:35

that are like whole tone scales, where

7:37

you're just going up in whole steps, not in major

7:40

seconds or a minor second to build a major

7:42

or minor scale. It's in whole tones.

7:44

So, it's actually that familiar, I think,

7:47

for us '90s TV dream sequence

7:50

that is brought out for us. One

7:53

of the extraordinary moments, and I feel like we're going to say

7:55

they're all extraordinary because they are,

7:57

but there's this point in the music where you

8:00

almost don't know what is going on. We

8:09

talked about motion before, like parallel motion,

8:12

things moving exactly in the same

8:14

direction and by the same interval. There's

8:17

contrary motion where they're moving in opposite

8:19

directions. This is like the final boss of

8:21

contrary motion. I don't even know exactly

8:24

how you even practice this besides

8:26

so slow, I could never even play it beyond

8:29

one beat equals 40 or something or 20.

8:31

Yeah, you would have to.

8:34

But also, Linda, this might

8:36

sound familiar to

8:39

people that like jazz, perhaps

8:41

John Coltrane and Giant Steps. This

8:43

was incredible. I'll play a little bit here

8:45

from a video and I'll put it online too, where the

8:48

notes are emphasized

8:50

and you can hear pretty clearly

8:53

what sounds like Giant Steps. That is

9:15

so similar and familiar. I don't even know what to think of it.

9:15

It's really fascinating. In some ways, it's an homage to the greatness of what Ravel did here. You

9:17

talked about these parallel arpeggios and

9:20

this creates this turbulence in the water,

9:22

this moving water. But I think what's

9:24

interesting too is that Ravel just doesn't rest

9:26

there. He gives us a melody within

9:29

that. So, there's a melody

9:31

in the treble that's played by

9:33

the right hand, and it's played with the top

9:35

finger of the right hand, what's known as the five,

9:38

the five finger. So, you're playing

9:40

a melody in the top, but

9:43

the rest of your right hand, the other

9:45

four fingers are playing the

9:47

arpeggio in parallel with

9:49

the arpeggio of the left hand. You

9:51

got to keep these things balanced in your mind.

9:54

Plus, you have to remember voicing. You

9:56

don't want necessarily all of them to be the same

9:58

dynamic range. You might want the treble, the melody

10:01

to be a little bit more prominent

10:04

than the others things.

10:06

I have a question on that because throughout

10:08

this, one of the difficult things or

10:11

what you're describing where you have to do so

10:14

many things with your hands

10:16

and so many things to keep track of going

10:18

up and down the piano and

10:21

with the different dynamics that are brought out like subito

10:24

very quickly, I wonder how much of a sensitive

10:26

touch does it even take to be

10:28

able to move your hand one so

10:30

quickly and then so softly on a

10:32

key when necessary?

10:33

Yeah, very difficult because you're talking about

10:35

control. So, if

10:38

you're playing everything loud, say in your right

10:40

hand, you can have a lot of power coming out of your arm

10:42

and in fact your body, not

10:44

just your fingers. But when you're playing

10:46

something that requires maybe different dynamics

10:48

within the same hand, then you have

10:50

to have a little bit more power maybe in the melody,

10:54

lessen it up a little bit on the fingers

10:56

that are playing the

10:59

supporting melody and supporting

11:01

notes. So, yes, it requires

11:03

a lot of finger control and arm control.

11:06

I imagine also when you're playing something like

11:08

this, you can't think about individual

11:11

notes. You

11:13

can't be thinking, " Oh, this note and then this note." No,

11:15

because there are, from what I

11:17

read, 10,000 notes in the first

11:19

movement, 10, 000. You can't think about

11:21

all those.

11:22

No, no, you can't. I mean, hopefully, you've practiced

11:24

very hard. So, now it comes to you almost

11:26

second nature.

11:29

The opening theme does

11:32

come back. It also

11:34

sounds more like

11:37

in a pleading sense, like now we're getting to that

11:39

moment where you were describing. It sounds like she's

11:42

in the final pleading or something

11:44

to convince this man. I

11:46

can read maybe the last two stances here

11:49

of the poem that include this. She

11:51

tries to persuade him to go with her.

11:54

She finished her murmured song and begged

11:56

me to put her ring on my finger, to be

11:58

the husband of a water nymph and to

12:00

come down with her to the palace as the king

12:02

of the lakes. When I told her

12:04

that I was in love with a mortal woman, she

12:07

began to sulk in annoyance, shed

12:09

a few tears, gave a burst of laughter,

12:11

and vanished in a shower of spray,

12:14

which ran in pale drops

12:16

down my blue window panes.

12:19

That is terrifying,

12:22

isn't it?

12:22

It really is. You don't know

12:24

what she's going to do. She's sulking in annoyance.

12:27

She has been rejected. So, she's sulking

12:30

and she's hurt. But in a split

12:32

second is this wild, crazy

12:34

laughter and this dramatic

12:36

response. It makes you wonder, was

12:38

she being serious with him all this time

12:40

or was this just a joke she was playing on him?

12:43

It's called a hobby, Linda. Can water nymphs

12:45

not have hobbies?

12:46

Yes.

12:46

I mean it really sounds

12:48

like when that burst, it reminds me

12:50

of something. I think it's in like the Little Mermaid, just this

12:52

maniacal laugh and burst into

12:55

the air and then down into the water.

12:58

I would not be able to sleep after this

13:00

if I was this person.

13:02

Ravel does it so dramatically too, doesn't it? All

13:04

of a sudden, he just springs that on you.

13:06

Yeah, and it's one of the effective uses

13:09

of silence. It doesn't work unless

13:11

you have this contrasting thing and

13:13

then that silence and then the burst

13:16

of laughter.

13:16

Yes, because preceding the burst are

13:18

about... I think they're five measures of

13:20

just very soft solo

13:24

right- hand notes.

13:26

You aren't quite sure what's going on with

13:28

this. Why are we hearing this serenity,

13:31

this peacefulness, all of a sudden just with one

13:33

single note, very soft? You don't

13:35

know what's coming. Then as you say, it's

13:37

that silence. It's that peacefulness that bursts

13:40

open, that gives you that element of surprise.

13:43

Now, it was definitely this piece, I think,

13:45

a surprise for whoever had to premiere

13:48

it first. I mean, what would

13:50

you even say when you look at this? I

13:54

mean, how do you even premiere something like this?

13:56

Yes, Ravel, when he was

13:58

writing this, before he wrote

14:00

it, he was given this collection of

14:02

Bertrand's prose poems that we're talking

14:04

about here that are the source material. He

14:06

read them and he thought they were fascinating. So, he chose three

14:09

of them to put to

14:11

music. He was a good

14:13

pianist. In fact, he studied piano at the Paris

14:15

Conservatory. So, he must've been pretty good and even won

14:17

an award there. But by all accounts,

14:19

he wasn't great and

14:22

he couldn't play this. It's

14:24

interesting you could write something that you can't play.

14:27

Yeah. I mean, on

14:29

one hand, if you're a pianist, is that

14:32

a little embarrassing or something?

14:35

Because I wonder sometimes when you see the music of Liszt

14:37

or Chopin and they could play that music, but

14:40

also when I listen to some Liszt after this,

14:42

it almost sounds cute.

14:44

Yeah, I think he may have been influenced by Liszt,

14:46

but he gave it to a friend of his, and

14:48

the friend of his was the person who introduced

14:51

Ravel to these prose poems of Bertrand

14:53

in the first place. This pianist was pretty

14:55

good. So, Ravel gave it to him as a friend of his,

14:57

and this friend was the one who actually

15:00

gave the premiere of Gaspard de la nuit, not

15:02

Ravel himself. But the

15:04

story I've heard is that after the premiere,

15:07

Ravel was not happy with how this

15:09

person interpreted it.

15:11

I mean, I don't know what I would say if

15:13

I played this thing and then Ravel was like, "

15:15

Ah." Actually, I've had someone do that to me before,

15:17

a composer. It was actually very funny.

15:19

Oh, really?

15:20

That's a long story for another time.

15:22

But I imagine I'd be like, " Well, lose my number

15:25

next time. Don't ask me to play this. I

15:27

spent two months learning this."

15:30

It also begs the question, John, if

15:32

Ravel were living today and

15:34

were able to hear all of the recordings that were made

15:37

of Gaspard de la nuit and all of the performances, you

15:39

go to the concerts and hear the pianists

15:41

since his death play this, would he

15:43

be happy with how they interpreted it?

15:45

I think he'd have to be.

15:46

Yeah, I think so too.

15:48

Now we go to the second movement, Le

15:51

Gibet. Now I guess a little

15:53

warning, we get pretty dark and morbid

15:55

with this one. This is one of the more dark

15:58

macabre pieces I think in

16:01

music. Maybe there's no better way

16:03

to get into this than just by

16:06

reading the poem. Can you read this for us, Linda?

16:09

All of these actually, they start with a little epitaph

16:11

from something else, like a little line.

16:13

Yes.

16:13

This one is, " What do I see stirring

16:16

around these gallows?" A quote of Faust

16:18

and then Linda, it continues with-

16:20

Yes. Because by the way, the title Le Gibet of

16:23

this movement refers to gallows.

16:24

Right, yes.

16:25

Yeah. So, the poem says, " What

16:27

is it, this uneasy sound

16:30

in the dusk? Is it a screech

16:32

of the north wind or does the hanged man

16:34

on the gallows let out a sigh?

16:37

Is it a cricket who sings lurking

16:39

in the moss and ivy, which covers the forest

16:41

floor out of pity? Is it some

16:44

fly hunting raw flesh

16:47

and sounding its horn around these ears

16:49

which are deaf to the fanfare? Is it

16:51

the scarab beetle in its uneven

16:54

flight, picking a blood-

16:56

soaked hair from that scalp?

16:59

Or then is it a spider who embroiders

17:01

a muslin tie, a shroud

17:04

for the broken neck? No, it

17:06

is the bell ringing by

17:08

the walls of the city below

17:10

the horizon and the carcass

17:12

of a hanged man reddened

17:15

by the setting sun."

17:17

That is creepy. This is something for

17:21

Halloween or something

17:23

like that. It is a very

17:26

intense source material.

17:29

There's something he's also bringing out from

17:31

that in a very creepy way, which I think you'll talk on in

17:33

a second. But a question I have for

17:35

you, Linda, playing piano, it says, I think,

17:38

(foreign language) . It's

17:40

muted the entire time.

17:42

Yes. Yeah, it is. It's very soft. It's

17:44

not only soft, it's a

17:46

slow tempo. So, the challenge

17:49

for anybody performing this is to

17:51

keep the momentum going.

17:54

You don't want anything to pause or stop.

17:56

He's telling a story here. So, you've got

17:58

to keep the momentum going, but doing so softly

18:00

and slowly is difficult.

18:02

I think this is another aspect

18:04

of virtuosity or high-

18:06

level playing that not everyone

18:09

seems to grab because the

18:11

point is you try to make it look easy. Playing

18:13

something slow and so

18:15

steady and not moving and this

18:19

movement, it's nearly as long or as long as the first,

18:22

but you do not deviate from

18:25

this sound and from this tempo. It's very meditative in a way too.

18:27

Yeah. It's almost like a dirge and funereal, which is in

18:34

keeping with the subject matter of a dead

18:36

man hanging in the gallows in

18:38

a very parched desert. I

18:41

think it's interesting too, when the

18:43

poem that accompanies this keeps talking about, "

18:45

What is this sound? Is it a beetle? Is it a north

18:47

wind? What is this sound I'm hearing?" No,

18:50

it's these bells that are tolling

18:52

in the back, almost like a funeral.

18:55

Those bells are these B flats that

18:57

are played the entire time.

19:00

This is another magic of Ravel. He

19:02

does it in a way that is not fatiguing,

19:06

it's not aggravating, it's not even

19:08

drawing attention to itself so much. It is

19:10

very still. Sometimes

19:13

it's obscured or hidden in a

19:16

different register too.

19:17

Yes, it's persistent. This brings

19:20

me back to what you were saying earlier, John,

19:22

that we might think of Edgar Allan Poe

19:24

and some of the creepiness in atmosphere he

19:26

created.

19:28

Bells, I've also

19:31

heard this like, it also sounds

19:33

like maybe just the squeaking of

19:35

a chain, something just creaking

19:37

in the wind gently. This

19:39

man, that's so

19:42

creepy.

19:49

If you consider that as I was mentioning

19:52

at the beginning, that the title of this is treasurer

19:56

of the night or treasurer

19:58

of the treasures or the images

20:00

of the night. So, if we think of this

20:02

entire work, not just this particular

20:05

movement, the Gibet, but the entire work as having a

20:08

theme of night or darkness. It

20:10

certainly does in this one, certainly darkness,

20:13

say a nighttime as a man has died

20:15

and the setting sun is

20:18

now red and darkening things

20:20

and we see him parched.

20:24

There is again this theme of darkness

20:27

and night.

20:29

The reddening setting sun, I think that's like

20:31

an emotion, or at least I get when you

20:33

see the sun and it's red and it's dark. The

20:35

night is coming and

20:37

you can't stop it. So, I get a feeling

20:39

of that too. Something that he

20:42

does here that is also

20:44

difficult. He writes in three staves.

20:46

So, there's like three lines of music. In

20:49

piano, there's the usual two, the treble clef

20:51

and then the bass clef. But then he adds another

20:53

bass clef because you're playing really

20:55

low on the piano and

20:57

it's just easier to read that way. Oftentimes

21:00

it's just like a pedal held out note.

21:03

But in here, he also writes

21:05

moving lines. When I look at the music,

21:07

if I didn't know what it was, I would think, " Is this for two

21:09

people to play? How do you do this?"

21:12

Yeah, right. Debussy did sometimes

21:14

a very similar device. It almost

21:16

brings to mind an orchestra. He's thinking, " Well, I'm

21:18

not going to restrict it to just two registers. An

21:20

orchestra can go louder, longer than, bigger

21:22

than this. So, let's bring in something else."

21:26

It ends with the B-

21:28

flats just ringing out in a very haunting

21:31

Edgar Allan Poe way.

21:50

Yes. Almost like a quiet

21:52

death, a funeral death saying

21:55

the end is near. The end is near of this man.

21:57

The end is near of this day.

22:00

We were talking about it being very steady and slow,

22:03

and the notes themselves are not

22:06

quite as difficult. The

22:09

hand movement is not quite as difficult as it was

22:11

in the Ondine movement we just discussed,

22:14

but it does require, as you

22:16

say, a muted sound. So,

22:18

that you have to have a very good hand control

22:21

and you have to keep this continual

22:24

onward movement going despite

22:26

the fact that this is a very still landscape

22:29

and there's a lack of action.

22:32

For musicians, there's certain pieces

22:34

that I have to play where you play every

22:36

single beat and usually that's

22:38

not good. You need some rest

22:41

to either breathe or something. But there's times where

22:44

in functions, I'll have to play something. You're

22:46

playing the entire time like at

22:49

a graduation, and it's oftentimes like a joke.

22:52

Like before you start, you'll say, " Okay, everyone,

22:55

see you on the other side of this."

22:57

Because once you start, it cannot change.

23:00

It cannot deviate. You cannot stop. It

23:02

is all the way to the end.

23:04

There are so many emotions you can experience

23:06

when you are sitting there in

23:08

that situation. But we will get into

23:11

the final and nightmare

23:13

inducing movement, Scarbo, right after

23:15

this. Now

23:17

we get to the final movement, and

23:19

one that I think really

23:21

cements this as being a pretty

23:24

intensely difficult work.

23:26

It is called Scarbo. I'll

23:29

read this epitaph and

23:31

then maybe you can read the poem, Linda. I loved

23:33

how you read the Gibet, but

23:36

the epitaph says, " He looks under

23:39

the bed in the chimney, in the cupboard,

23:41

nobody. He could not understand how

23:43

he got in or how he escaped." That

23:46

comes from nocturnal tales by Hoffman.

23:48

Yes. The poem that goes along with

23:50

this, again, written by Bertrand in

23:52

his collection called Gaspard de la nuit, he

23:55

wrote, " Oh, how often

23:57

I have heard and seen him,

23:59

Scarbo, when at midnight

24:01

the moon glitters in the sky like

24:03

a silver shield on an azure

24:06

banner strewn with golden

24:08

bees? How often have I

24:10

heard his laughter buzz in the shadow

24:13

of my alcove and his fingernail

24:15

grate on the silk of the curtains of

24:17

my bed? How often have

24:19

I seen him alight on the floor,

24:22

pirouette on one foot and

24:24

roll through the room like a spindle

24:26

fallen from the wand of a sorceress?"

24:37

I think fiendish is the word

24:39

that comes to mind for me with this. It is a

24:41

goblin running around.

24:43

Yes. What he's portraying here is

24:46

an impish goblin that comes

24:49

from folklore, and it's designed to

24:51

be mischievous and bug you.

24:54

Whatever happened to goblins? I feel like we just don't see them

24:56

anymore.

24:56

You're right.

24:57

What are goblins doing? But

25:00

looking at some YouTube videos, there's plenty

25:02

of people, pianists who talk about their interpretations

25:04

of this. One that I've seen I think

25:06

more than a couple of times is the

25:08

opening couple of low notes, it's like

25:11

the creaking of the door coming

25:13

open. Then the repeated notes,

25:15

it's that flittering goblin

25:18

running around, rolling like a spindle or

25:20

doing a pirouette, something like that.

25:22

Yes, that's right. I think Ravel so

25:24

cleverly portrays that at the very beginning

25:27

is very, very quiet, enough

25:29

to bug you and wonder if

25:32

something's going on or is it my imagination or

25:34

is there somebody in here with me? He does

25:36

that by repeating, I think it's a D

25:38

sharp, if I'm not mistaken. I can't remember.

25:41

Yes, it is a D sharp.

25:44

Plays that note incessantly, the same

25:46

note over and over and over again, which is actually hard

25:48

to do.

25:49

It is.

25:49

Yeah, because you have to let the key

25:52

release and come up before you can play it

25:54

again, right? So sometimes

25:56

you can't get your finger to work that fast. So,

25:58

what you'll do is use different fingers.

26:06

Even three fingers, and the way you're moving

26:08

your hand is just a

26:11

whole technique.

26:12

Yeah, to play a repeated note that quickly.

26:14

So what are the especially difficult

26:17

things here, Linda? I know there's the

26:20

repeated note, which takes a lot of practice.

26:22

There's videos just on how to play these repeated

26:25

notes and how do you even approach them?

26:27

Is it how fast

26:30

you have to play? Is it the rhythms or is

26:32

it the interpretation that

26:34

you have to do or maybe it's a combination?

26:35

Yeah, there are actually a couple of things. By

26:38

the way, playing anything on a black key is more difficult

26:40

than playing it on a white key.

26:41

Okay.

26:42

Black keys are more slippery.

26:44

Oh, because they're the

26:46

lacquer or something.

26:47

I guess. Yeah.

26:48

Okay.

26:48

They're smaller. So, Ravel

26:52

didn't care. I guess he gave us that D sharp

26:54

and had us play on that black key.

26:55

Well, he's not playing it. Why does he care?

26:57

He's not playing it. But

27:03

there are so many very difficult things. I'll

27:06

just mention a couple of them. Those repeated

27:08

notes, as we talked about,

27:11

he's got lots of tremolos going on. He

27:13

does have three staves, if I'm not mistaken,

27:16

at some point. So, we've got different

27:19

parts of the registers of the keyboard playing at the

27:21

same time. Lots

27:23

of skips, lots of jumps all over the

27:25

keyboard as the goblin is flitting

27:27

around. It's portrayed with

27:29

your hands flitting all over the keyboard.

27:31

There's lots of syncopation. The rhythms

27:34

are very hard. They're very complex

27:36

rhythms. But I find even just

27:38

the notes figuring out the notes that he wants

27:41

you to play, because he's got double sharps all

27:43

over the place. That's common

27:46

in his stuff is double sharps. So, just

27:48

even figuring that out and everything

27:50

is moving at lightning fast pace,

27:53

but then he's got also different dynamics. So, you might

27:55

be playing very loud one moment and then split

27:57

second, the goblin goes to a silence.

27:59

Yeah. I definitely find

28:02

the aspect of moving from

28:04

very loud to very soft

28:06

to be actually quite virtuosic, especially

28:08

with these big chords on the piano.

28:11

I remember in school, I had to take piano

28:13

lessons like an undergrad.

28:15

I think everyone did. Usually, they make the

28:18

grad students teach

28:20

you because they're just teaching non- majors.

28:23

I remember at one point, I did not

28:25

take it seriously because I

28:28

didn't take it as seriously, but I had

28:30

this teacher and she was showing me like... This

28:32

something I was playing is very easy. No,

28:35

louder, forte. She's showing me

28:37

how she's playing it, and she played it so loud

28:39

and strong, it was startling me. We were sat

28:41

at the same piano next to each other, and she's

28:44

hammering on the piano. No, like this. Just the

28:46

one note. Then I try to do it and

28:48

it's like mezzo piano at best.

28:51

I'm like, " My fingers hurt." I

28:54

frustrated that teacher. But

28:56

that's one of the things, when you have to move so quickly

28:58

from one extreme to the other, particularly

29:01

with the piano and how you bring these voices

29:03

out in the chords, that's hard.

29:05

That's unassumingly hard.

29:08

It really is. It requires control that we

29:10

were talking about before with the Ondine and

29:12

with Gibet too, control because

29:16

playing loud does not necessarily

29:18

mean you're playing loud from your finger. You're using

29:21

your arm to produce that power and

29:24

your body in some cases too. So,

29:27

you say you're in this mode when you're playing

29:30

Scarbo and then you have to shift

29:32

immediately, almost like the Beethoven would

29:34

do that with subito pianos. All of a sudden,

29:36

you have to go down to pianissimo and

29:39

then a sudden shift back up to fortissimo.

29:42

So, he's got these sudden

29:44

shifts of dynamics going on all over

29:46

the place, and sudden shifts of

29:48

mood that define

29:50

Scarbo, this little goblin who's bugging

29:52

somebody. So, there are times it's very

29:55

quiet and you think, " Gee, is he here? Is

29:57

he in the room? I'm not sure. He might be in the

29:59

corner there. He might be behind the door, or maybe he's

30:01

behind the silk curtain there." And

30:03

then all of a sudden he buzzes out and it's very loud.

30:05

That's what Ravel was able to create throughout

30:08

this whole thing.

30:09

I mean, it's basically like your worst nightmare when you're

30:11

watching TV alone and you think you see

30:14

something out of the corner of your eye.

30:17

My favorite part of

30:20

Scarbo is toward

30:22

the end, he gets into this very

30:25

dramatic passage where he's got

30:27

these big chords that are moving

30:29

up the keyboard in both hands. Then

30:31

he got these fortissimo and these

30:34

accents, almost

30:36

like, " Ah, got you." Then it goes back

30:38

down and it comes back up the keyboard again. Then he goes, "

30:40

Dadun!" Again, he's scaring you.

30:43

It really feels like he has these moments

30:46

continuously where it's like building up to something

30:49

and then he smashes it down and

30:51

then it builds up again and then smashes it down,

30:53

I guess, like the goblin over here. No, over here.

30:55

That's right. By the way, I will say

30:57

that there were parts of

31:00

Scarbo when I listened to it carefully that

31:02

actually remind me of Ondine the water

31:04

in that he's creating a seamless

31:07

stream of music between

31:09

right hand and left hand. So, it may be starting down in the bass,

31:11

but it's streamless. Sometimes the

31:13

hands are moving separately, but just this streamless

31:17

flow of music that almost depicts

31:19

water. There was a specific part

31:21

in Scarbo that does remind me of Ondine,

31:24

which is the water nymph.

31:33

Something that was surprising to me

31:35

when I was reading about this

31:37

and how people are approaching it, something

31:40

I saw a couple of times is you

31:42

don't need to do much. It

31:44

sounds like with Ravel or something like this

31:46

that feels in a way that you can really

31:48

do a lot with or you have choices. People

31:51

kept saying, " You just need to

31:53

play what he wrote, and that's

31:55

it." You don't have to add anything else to it.

31:58

In fact, you do that, you end up possibly toppling

32:00

the whole thing over.

32:01

Yes, that's true. I mean, assuming that you can

32:03

play what he wrote, because it's very difficult. But

32:05

if you can, you're right. There's

32:07

no romanticization of this

32:09

involved. There's no interpretation. We shouldn't

32:12

approach this like we're playing a work of

32:14

Chopin, for example, that does require

32:16

some interpretation. This isn't romantic music.

32:19

This is music that he wants you to just

32:21

portray. I

32:23

did read a critique

32:26

once of someone playing this, and

32:28

the critic criticized

32:30

the player as injecting his

32:33

personality too much and his own expression

32:35

too much into the entire Gaspard de

32:37

la nuit, instead of just letting

32:39

the notes go, as Ravel wrote them, of course, follow

32:42

Ravel's instructions because Ravel was

32:44

very explicit in a lot of these instructions.

32:47

But yes, exactly, if you just play it as

32:49

is, that will give you the desired effect.

32:52

It's interesting, John, I think it's interesting that

32:55

Ravel and his older contemporary

32:57

Claude Debussy did

33:00

not like the label of

33:02

impressionist.

33:03

Right. No, they didn't.

33:04

Yet there is some impressionistic

33:06

elements in this entire work.

33:09

Yeah, definitely. Especially I think the

33:11

Ondine really fits

33:14

that, but yeah, that's one he didn't

33:17

quite like. Yeah, I just found it

33:19

surprising that with Ravel,

33:22

you just play what he wrote and you'll

33:24

be set if you can play it. Now,

33:27

the poem does come

33:30

to an end with the goblin perhaps

33:33

leaving or something. I'll read a bit of this.

33:36

Did I think him vanished then? The dwarf

33:38

appeared to stretch between the moon and myself

33:41

like the steeple of a gothic cathedral, a

33:43

golden bell wobbling on his pointed cap!

33:46

But soon his body developed a bluish tint,

33:48

translucent like the wax of a candle,

33:50

his face blanched like melting wax,

33:52

and suddenly his light went out.

34:08

So, this goblin, in the end,

34:10

I guess, his light goes out. The goblin is gone,

34:12

and these little moments

34:14

that build up and collapse bring us all

34:17

the way really to the end where it's like in the last

34:19

minute we have a huge climax

34:22

that... I don't want to

34:24

say Musorgsky, but it reminds me of Musorgsky's

34:26

writing. This big climax he has

34:28

in the piano.

34:30

But I think it's fascinating, isn't it, that in this

34:32

piece that is so dramatic has such

34:34

dramatic back and

34:36

forths and so many interesting dynamics

34:39

that it ends in a whimper,

34:42

very soft whimper.

34:44

Yeah. I mean that the goblin is here and then the

34:46

goblin is gone.

34:47

He's gone.

34:47

Thinking of the door

34:49

creaking open in the beginning, the

34:52

door creaking closed, I mean

34:54

also Michael Jackson thriller. That's

34:57

how that opens and closes with a creaking

34:59

door opening and closing. So, it's

35:02

an idea you find in today's

35:04

music and in Ravel's music and all the way, of

35:06

course, and then in the words of Bertrand, which

35:10

inspired this whole thing.

35:11

Yes. I'll tell you, if Ravel

35:14

ever looked back and evaluated

35:17

the music that he produced during his life,

35:19

I hope he holds this as really

35:21

probably one of the top, if not

35:23

the top, because it's very, very inventive

35:26

work.

35:27

I don't know of any other piano works quite like

35:30

this. Yeah, I listen to

35:32

some Liszt. I think you mentioned also

35:34

before you had written to me,

35:37

Mephisto Waltz is by Liszt. I

35:39

went and I listened to one and it's like, " This is so cute. I

35:41

could play this." After hearing this, I could

35:43

do this.

35:44

Yeah. It doesn't quite have the inventiveness, I don't think,

35:46

or quite the programmatic quality that

35:49

these works do of Ravel.

35:50

Yeah. Well, Gaspard de la

35:53

nuit, it is an incredible work.

35:56

I mean, there are so many things to find

35:59

within the poems that he

36:01

used from Bertrand and little moments

36:03

I think of inventiveness, especially

36:05

with this goblin, which I

36:08

don't know, the goblins have to have hobbies too.

36:10

Like the nymphs.

36:11

Yes. But I really love

36:13

this, and yeah, thank you

36:15

so much, Linda, for especially sharing some pianistic

36:18

insights for this that I wouldn't know.

36:20

Oh, thank you for inviting me. I will always

36:22

be willing and happy to discuss

36:25

Maurice Ravel.

36:27

Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown,

36:29

your guide to classical music. For

36:32

more information on this episode, visit the show

36:34

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36:37

You can send me comments and episode ideas

36:39

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36:46

John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical

36:48

Breakdown from WETA Classical.