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Has anyone here worked on this concerto?

I've recently started it and am wondering if anyone could share some insight about practicing this concerto. The opening especially has been problematic. I'm not sure how to secure those chords. It's also quite difficult to maintain smooth lines.

Hmm, I've never found the first cadenza (assuming that is what you are referring to) difficult. Enough slow practice is the ticket, in my experience.

For me, the most difficult passages of the concerto are:

a.) The rapid arpeggios that accompany the chinoiserie theme (figures 25 & 41), mainly because I have small hands.

b.) The rapid leaps in figure 43 -- and they're supposed to get faster!

c.) The closing cadenza. YIKES!

IMHO if you can handle those three, you're all set. The entire concerto requires the utmost power to be delivered with flexibility and suppleness. Certainly a challenge!

I do not know the piece and the difiiculties. But supposing you have two hands - why not use the right hand in difficult passages?

Piano playing is not cirkus or acrobatics. If the music is worth playing, play it the way you find it easy.

Given that the work is written specifically to be played by the left hand, and that concertos are, to an extent, display-pieces - at least originally - wouldn't introducing the right hand completely defeat the object, not to mention being contrary to the composer's wishes?

I've played a few LH pieces and they're enormously rewarding. It gives a totally different perspective on our instrument.

The greatest single piece for LH alone ever written IMHO.

It's a beautiful concerto. I'm trying to push myself to learn it by October or November for a competition.

Hopefully I'll be able to play all those parts with the finger crossings.

I have studied one piece for LH - Milosz Magin's Prelude pour le main gauche seulement from 5 preludes - and stuck to the LH because it was possible and felt great.

Of course, in a competition you have to play with LH only. But I mean, if you only enjoy the music for yourself, our can assist with you RH.

As many other LH pieces, it was written for a pianist who lost his right arm during the war, or in an accident.

I don't see how it's playable. It must be one of the most monstrous things ever written.


If the poster is considering performing it then it's probably not wise to use the right hand.

The final cadenza is playable, even though fudging around with tempo becomes a necessity here and there (the whole piece really does fit the resources of the left hand like a glove). The main issue IMHO is endurance. The soloist has plenty of opportunities to rest in the concerto, but from the final cadenza onwards it's just one gruelling figuration after another without any respite. I've never been able to read through the cadenza without stopping to rest every so often.

In the cadenza where there are several arpeggiation figures starting in the bass and moving up to the treble clef (it starts with a second inversion A minor chord), do you switch fingers on the repeated notes? I'm having trouble figuring out what to do there...

Yup. Those repeated notes are usually (but not always) a signal for 1-5 or x-5 (upwards figuration) or 5-1 or x-1 (downwards figuration).

sorry, but what does the x in x-1 mean?

In the figuration with the espressivo melody where the figuration goes from a 6-tuplet to 8-tuplet, what did you do with the fingering exactly for those repeated Cs and As? I don't understand what Ravel is telling my hand to do there.

I think he means whichever finger suits the context, for example 2-1 for the first repeated Cs.

I finger the entire beat thus:

5 3 2 1 3 2 1 2 1 2 4 2 3 2
E A C E A C E C C A E A A C

This sort of thing happens so often in the cadenza that after a while the fingering should become self-evident.

nlogn is right about what I meant by my use of x.

Thanks. That makes more sense now, although I'm wondering about the part where Ravel outlines that A major chord with the eighth note E tied to the quarter to the dotted quarter.

starting on the E, I have

2 3 1 2 5 2 1 3 r 2 1 2 5 1 2 3 5 and so on
E C C A E A C C E C C A E E C A E
(#)
Any suggestions for that part? My hand wants to play that quarter note E so badly.

I don't have other recordings but what Zimerman does is play the tied E very lightly so as not to disrupt the melody line.

Edit: I meant the second E of the tie.

^ Yeah, that's what I would do too. The restruck E is supposed to be part of the accompaniment rather than the melody at this point. The dynamic difference between melody and accompaniment should be quite pronounced in the cadenza.

The best thing to do is to play different rhythms. That will help you master the technical passage.