Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G Major, M. 83 (1931)
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major, M. 82 (1930)
JohannSebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude in C Major, BWV 846, (1722, arr. Paul Wittgenstein)
Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999 (1725, arr. Paul Wittgenstein)
Partita No. 1 in B-Flat Major, BWV 825: VII. Gigue (1726)
Sonata for Flute and Harpsichord in E-Flat Major, BWV 1031: II. Sicilienne (1734)
Yeol Eum Son (piano)
Residentie Orkest The Hague/Anja Bihlmaier
rec. 2022-24, The Hague & Paris
Naïve V8447 [53]

In spite of winning second prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition and silver medal at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Yeol Eum Son seems to have recorded little. I have her excellent recording of works by Nikolai Kapustin and have heard some of her complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, so was intrigued by how she would approach these two very different concertos. 

I do agree with John Quinn (review) and Dominic Hartley (review) who questioned the assumption record companies have that the two Ravel concertos should be recorded together. Written at the end of his life they could not be more different. The G major work shaped in three standard movements and which he began first is full of sunlight and joy. He put that to one side to meet the deadline for the D major which is dark and brooding and in one movement of impeccable construction.

The Left-hand Concerto was thus completed first in 1930 with the G Major following in 1931. 

As is well documented the D major concerto was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein the son of the fabulously wealthy Austrian industrialists and brother of the philosopher Paul. He was left with the use of one hand when his right was amputated as the result of an injury in WW1. Using his wealth he commissioned a number of concertante works, chamber works and solo works for himself to play. 

The Ravel is certainly the most famous of the concertos he commissioned to the detriment of the others. Strauss’s Parergon zur Sinfonia Domestica is tremendously effective as is Korngold’s concerto and that by Franz Schmidt though all suffer from orchestration which two hands, let alone one, would struggle to contend with. The Prokofiev and Hindemith works which Wittgenstein refused to play are hardly from either composers’ top draw. Britten’s Diversions on the other hand (no pun intended) is a great work which I much prefer to his concerto. I would love to hear the two concertante works that Norman Demuth wrote for Wittgenstein, but they languish still unperformed. 

The Ravel concerto is one of the masterworks of the twentieth century and has entered the standard repertoire in a way that no other left-hand concerto has. I find it fascinating that Roger Muraro played it in the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition as did Carter Johnson in this year’s Van Cliburn. There are numerous versions on YouTube, and it has had many commercial recordings since Jacqueline Blancard and Charles Munch’s premiere recording in 1938. The various documents we have of Wittgenstein playing the work show it to be almost beyond him and the changes he made to the piano part utterly ridiculous. The work is perfectly judged in form, material and emotional content. That is not to say even with Ravel’s scrupulous markings it is infallible. The conductor and soloist must judge the micro and macro form to perfection. Likewise, the engineers need to know how to pick up the extraordinarily detailed orchestration.

So, this recording, while it has some virtues, has some failings as well. There are excellent orchestral playing and an excellent piano sound with clarity in both upper and lower registers. The low rumble on double basses, on their open strings, which begins the work and the contrabassoon who introduces the first melody are well caught. Then the piano enters and there is the first problem with the microform. The brilliant cadenza is made up of small sections of different emotional feelings and dynamic range. All this must be shaped to lead successfully to the next section which is a big orchestral flourish. Sadly, Ms Yon lingers too long on pauses and misjudges some pedalling so that the whole thing seems to stop rather than lead. Therefore, the orchestral entry after the cadenza comes as something of a surprise. This entry grows to a tremendous climax ending in trumpet fanfares which then pass to the horns (c 6’ in), only try as I might I cannot hear the horns, their important musical material lost under the noise of percussion. Things pick up when the piano introduces the next elegiac secondary theme which Ms Yon phrases beautifully as do the solo wind instruments who join with the piano to comment on and extend the material. This section gradually builds to the central part of the work a disturbing scherzo-like Allegro in 6/8. 

In an interview with his friend M.D. Calvocoressi for the Daily Telegraph, Ravel described this segment as “an episode in the nature of an improvisation…introducing a kind of jazz music actually constructed on the themes of the first section.” It is indeed a careful mix of harmonies and rhythms inspired by the blues and jazz Ravel had heard on a visit to the USA. It is also one of the sections Wittgenstein disliked, having no interest in these newfangled popular idioms. The sound here is very good with the solo bassoon in Rite of Spring stratospheric heights doing a brilliant job imitating a sleazy saxophone. It is a little slower than Ravel’s metronome mark, but the performers bring it off. The section builds and builds with both soloist and orchestra trying to outdo each other until a violent climax leads into the second cadenza. This was another sticking point for Wittgenstein who wrote to Ravel, “If I wanted to play without the orchestra, I wouldn’t have commissioned a concerto!”.  This second cadenza is extraordinary in its understated virtuosity. There are often three lines of music going on at the same time, separate melodies in the upper and lower part and florid accompaniment in the middle. Ravel wrote “In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands.” In this cadenza the ear cannot believe there is only one hand playing. Sadly, as in the first cadenza, although Ms Yon is brilliant at colouring the different layers, I do not feel she has taken into consideration the shape of the mostly rhapsodic material and so does not build in a natural fashion to the orchestral entry. This entry grows inexorably to a very brief recap of the march material and an emphatic ending.

The sound overall is good although as noted some orchestral detail is obscured in tutti passages. The main let-down for me are the two cadenzas, which lack shape and so damage the overall structure of this immaculately constructed work.

On YouTube there is a very fine live performance of the work by Ms Son with an unidentified, I think, Spanish orchestra. The curious approach to the cadenzas I found off-putting here are absent and the whole performance is much more successful. Strangely though, for some reason, having played the work with one hand, she decides to use both for the final two bars. 

With the D major work out of the way Ravel was able to concentrate on the G major work which initially, as he told Calvocoressi in the same interview, he intended to play himself. This should have caused no problems, he was a gifted, if not virtuoso, pianist, but his growing health problems however made this impossible and the work was performed to great success by the doyenne of French pianists Marguerite Long, to whom Ravel dedicated the work. Ms Long must have been a quick learner as he only gave her the score in November 1931, and the premiere was in the following January. The two recorded the work soon after the premiere and while we must not take as gospel that performance, we should listen to it carefully as Ravel was quite dogmatic in how his tempo markings should be followed. 

Ravel observed that, “I had intended to entitle this concerto Divertissement, then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so, because the very title ‘Concerto’ should be sufficiently clear.” Well, the concerto is certainly diverting and in complete contrast to the D major one. It opens with the clap of a slapstick and while the piano quietly plays a bitonal accompaniment a solo piccolo (the opposite end of the sonic spectrum to the D Major’s contrabassoon) introduces the first jaunty melody. The key to this movement is to follow Ravel’s markings. The opening is marked Allegramente and then the piano entry with the second subject is marked meno vivo, i.e. not that different, too many pianists however enter far too slowly and then have a problem with what to do with later entries. Happily, Ms Son keeps the tempo going and indeed is excellent throughout at phrasing the spiky, jazzy changes of rhythm which move the work forward – that is, until she does something very odd at 3’ 46 (letter 17 in the score) in the run up to one of the big climaxes. The material before and after is marked ff with no indication that this unbarred piano solo should be anything different, but Ms Yon slows down dramatically and drops to a pianissimo, which makes no sense and has the effect of putting the brakes on the energy. The only person I have found who tried a similar approach was Leonard Bernstein in one of his live performances and it didn’t work there either. Thankfully, there are no more surprises. Her right-hand trills which mark the first twelve bars of the cadenza are nice and tight and show no sense of strain in what a technically uncomfortable passage is. This opening movement is notable for a lot of tricky solo writing for a number of instruments, notably the piccolo, horn, trumpet, and harp, and each of the soloists here delivers them with aplomb. The integration of the solos with the piano has, here, a welcome feel of chamber music about them. All in all, it is a good opening, not as playful as some but with a good sense of forward motion.

The slow movement was, compositionally, one of the most difficult pieces Ravel ever wrote. He later remarked that he composed it two measures at a time, using as his inspiration Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (K. 581). It begins with a long solo piano passage in 3/4 but with the left hand phrasing the accompaniment in 6/8 so there is a tension between 3 2s and 2 3s. The melody has to unwind seamlessly with an inevitability leading to the gradual increase in the number of notes as the piano moves from soloist to accompanist. If Ms Yon does not have the liquid sound of Michelangeli or de Larrocha but she shapes the material gracefully and allows the various solo instruments to shine through. The duet with the cor anglais beginning at 6’ 18” is beautifully handled.

The finale is in complete contrast a madcap chase in which all sense of decorum goes out of the window. Four fortissimo raucous orchestral chords precede the piano entry. The piano plays rapid semiquavers marked piano a dynamic marking almost no one observes. It is as though they all get too excited by the energy that they play too loudly, forgetting they are supposed to accompany the Eb clarinet and Piccolo who soon join in. Even the two I return to most, de Larrocha on Decca and Zimmerman on DG, are too loud. These players are no exception and throughout the detail of Ravel’s dynamics are lost. The performers do set a good speed, and the piccolo clarinet seems to be having fun, but this performance does not quite take off for me. Everyone seem to be holding something back and part way through the energy seems to flag just a little – but enough for it not to ring true. More like cava than champagne.

Wittgenstein’s magnum opus was the three volume School for the Left Hand, which documented his personal training of the left hand for performance. Beginning with technical and strengthening studies the material develops to virtuoso transcriptions of standard repertoire. Probably the most terrifying is the transcription of Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. Here, as the two concertos hardly fill a disc, Ms Son gives us some of Wittgenstein’s Bach transcriptions. The popular C major Prelude from Bach’s 48 opens Wittgenstein’s third volume of studies and comes off better than some of his other transcriptions as it is quite plain and devoid of Romantic additions. Throughout his work, Wittgenstein emphasises quite unorthodox fingerings for left hand and the score for this Prelude has new fingerings in every bar. Ms Son plays it perhaps too quickly for my taste but does manage the very large leaps smoothly. She is excellent in the C minor Prelude from the Little Preludes giving a clear sound to each part. The semi quavers in the right hand and quavers in the left are flawlessly integrated. The Gigue which ends the First Partita in Bb, even though Bach gives no tempo direction, is usually taken at breakneck speed by two handed pianists, pace Argerich and Sokolov. It would be quite impossible played Presto with one hand and Wittgenstein wisely marks it Allegretto con moto ed espressivo and this is what Ms Yon gives us. Even so, the dexterity required to leap two octaves about the keyboard with one hand and make music is quite something. The final work is a transcription of the Sicilienne from the Second Sonata for Flute and Keyboard. Each separate voice is beautifully coloured and what on paper looks like impossible fingering produces a lyrical work entirely in keeping with the original. Ms Son could easily have kept going with the transcriptions as even with these four works the CD is only 53 minutes long.

Paul RW Jackson

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