Max Derrickson

Writing Music Program Notes for Over 30 Years

Tag: Ravel

Tzigane, for Violin and Orchestra

Like so many composers before him, French composer Maurice Ravel succumbed to the charms of Hungarian gypsy folk music in 1924 when he heard a recital by the great Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aryáni

Rapsodie Espagnole

The Prelude to Rapsodie Espagnole is a perfect opening … – evocative of the sensuality and slight menace brought on by the fall of darkness. Ravel uses it as a color piece, with misty and suggestive orchestration, whispering of the dances and cavorting that will occur behind closed doors in Madrid that night. …

La Valse

Always in love with dance forms as structures for music, Ravel turned to both dance and Vienna for another inspiration in 1906. He focused on that most ubiquitous of dance forms, the “Viennese waltz,”…