Toccata

Although Ravel was undoubtedly talented, his impressionistic three-part masterpiece, “Gaspard de la Nuit” was apparently too dificult for him to play.

This writer was fortunate enough to witness a live performance of this suite,which is considered one of the most challenging pieces for the piano in existence.

Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia article describing this three-part masterpiece…

Gaspard de la nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d’après Aloysius Bertrand is a piece for solo piano by Maurice Ravel. It has three movements, each based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand. The work was premiered on January 9, 1909 in Paris by Ricardo Viñes.

The piece is famous for its incredible difficulty, partly due to the fact that Ravel intended the Scarbo movement to be more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamey. Because of its technical difficulty and profound musical structure, it is popularly considered to be one of the most difficult solo piano pieces in the standard repertoire.

The manuscript currently resides in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin.

The name Gaspard is derived from its original Persian form, denoting the man in charge of the royal treasures: “Gaspard of the Night or the treasurer of the night thus creates allusions to someone in charge of all that is jewel-like, dark, mysterious, perhaps even morose.”[2]

The three parts of this incredibly beautiful suite are performed in the three videos that follow, performed by Valentina Lisitsa.  The sheet music is provided for those of you who’d like to play along at home.

The first part is entitled “Ondine”, and is described on wikipedia as follows…

Ondine is an oneiric tale of a water fairy singing to seduce the observer and accompany her to visit her kingdom deep at the bottom of the lake in the triangle of water, fire and earth. It is reminiscent of the tinkling of the water in a stream, woven with cascades. This movement was intended to describe the water sprite in Aloysius Bertrand’s poem, attempting to lure men into her domain. This piece contains technical problems for the right hand such as the fast repetition of three-note chords.

The second part is entitled, “Le Gibet”, and is described on wikipedia as follows…

Le Gibet, an eerie work in which the observer wonders at the scene he’s witnessing. “It is a bell tinting at the walls of a city under the horizon and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun”. Throughout the entire piece is a B-flat octave ostinato, imitative of the tinting bells, that must remain distinctive and constant in tone as notes cross over and dynamics change.

The third and final section is entitled “Ondine”, and is described on wikipedia as follows…

Scarbo, a small fiend – half goblin, half ghost – making pirouettes, disappearing and scaring a person in his home. Scarbo could stand for “scarabée”, a beetle. Its uneven flight, hitting and scratching against the panels of the bed, casting a growing shadow under the moonlight creates a nightmarish scene for the observer lying in his bed. With its repeated notes and two terrifying climaxes, this movement is the high-point of technical difficulty of the three movements. It gives an impression of the fiendish mischief committed by a ghostly imp during the night, fading in and out of vision while changing forms, which is portrayed in the difficult crescendos. Technical difficulties include repeated notes in both hands, and tricky double-note scales in major seconds in the right hand.