Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 09/27/2017, uploaded on 03/11/2019

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In the mid-1920s, Ravel struck up a friendship with British-Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi. It was her captivating renditions of gypsy music that prompted him to write this colorful and bracingly virtuosic rhapsody in the gypsy style (the title Tzigane means “gypsy” in French). Tzigane opens with a lengthy cadenza-like solo that explores the violin’s sultry lower register. After what sounds like an extended warmup, the violinist introduces a passionate, gypsy-flavored melody that grows increasingly animated and intense. As the music gradually climbs into the stratosphere, double-stops, roulades, and other virtuosic accoutrements offer a foretaste of the pyrotechnical display that lies ahead. The violin part eventually subsides on a quiet double trill, to which the piano responds with rippling passagework. Out of this ethereal duet emerges the dance-like main theme, which Ravel presents in a series of bravura variations, chock full of surprises and culminating in a dazzling exhibition of violinistic fireworks.                 Notes by Harry

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.