Ravel: Fragments

French pianist Bertrand Chamayou compiled his unusual album, Ravel Fragments, specifically for the composer’s 150th anniversary year. “But to be honest,” he tells Apple Music Classical, “I would be happy if every year could be his anniversary!” Chamayou has recorded rather more than usual of Ravel’s piano music, including the 11-minute cheeky and little-known La Parade, which was only discovered in 2008. So what was there left for him to record? Quite a lot, in fact, if you count the concertos, songs and chamber music involving piano. But, Chamayou explains, he was unable to organise recording these with the musicians he wanted in time for the anniversary year. So he had to fall back on recording an album just involving himself as a performer. “Then I realised that I had never recorded the piano transcriptions Ravel made of La valse and the three fragments of Daphnis et Chloé.” La valse particularly intrigued Chamayou. The transcription that is usually heard is the version for two pianos. Ravel’s transcription for solo piano is less often performed, for reasons Chamayou explains: “The one he made for solo piano is a little bit mysterious because there are two staves you can play and which present the structure of the piece; but Ravel added some extra staves which include some important elements that one actually cannot play in this setting. It’s like it’s unfinished, actually. So whenever a solo pianist is playing La valse in Ravel’s transcription, they have to effectively work out their own transcription out of what he wrote.” A possible explanation, Chamayou suggests, is that the solo piano version was intended for rehearsal purposes, La valse having originally been intended as an elaborate dance scenario to be performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. So those extra staves on which Ravel added details omitted in the main two staves might have been for reference during rehearsals. In effect, the ingredients for Chamayou to make his own performing version were all there: “You have to make your own cuisine, let’s say.” Chamayou insists he used no studio trickery such as overdubs to achieve his “fleshed out” version of Ravel’s solo piano transcription. “I decided to find a way to play everything. Of course, you have to squeeze a few notes, and I added a few to create an illusion of details that were otherwise missing. I also added a few things from the orchestral version: for example, at the beginning there is a little flute chromaticism Ravel didn’t put in his piano score, but I think it’s a fairly substantial element. I found it’s possible to add it with the right hand while playing the two lines that Ravel wrote at that point just with the left hand!” And what of the other pieces on the album? “I brought in some little transcriptions I did myself. The first track, ‘Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis’, from Ravel’s Trois chansons, is something I’d played often for my own pleasure, though never at a concert.” Two other Chamayou transcriptions, of “Chanson de la mariée” (from Ravel’s arrangements of Greek melodies) and of Pièce en forme de habanera, are also included to charming effect. There are also musical homages to Ravel by other composers. “I had always wanted to record Sciarrino’s De la nuit, which presents fragments of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit all mixed up and put together as a kind of kaleidoscope.” With its abrupt changes and virtuosic flutters, the result sounds remarkably akin to Ravel’s depiction of moths from Miroirs. Several other pieces were considered and rejected, such as Xenakis’ “A r”, which, although a tribute to the French composer, appeared “too percussive” and unlike Ravel’s own style to fit the programme. “At some point I decided even the pieces which are not by Ravel should have something in common with Ravel, to create when we put them all together a kind of portrait of Ravel.” There was also consideration of how one piece would lead to another. A fine example of this is the way the dark and bleak Pour tous ceux qui tombent (For all who fall) by the contemporary French composer Frédéric Durieux prepares for the tenebrous and mysterious opening of La valse at the bass end of the keyboard. This is perhaps the album’s darkest moment, but it ends with joy and light with the final “Scène de Daphnis et Chloé”.“I always wanted to put the three excerpts of Daphnis,” says Chamayou, “even though they are spread through the album, in the right order of appearance in the score. With the last excerpt, I wanted to find other pieces to put after it; but at some point, it felt obvious to me that the album should open with Ravel and should end with Ravel.”