Along the Edges of the Night

Ravel was a night owl. He loved wandering through Paris at night. He incorporated the sounds of cafés and cabarets into his music. This concert opens with songs by Satie and Gershwin, which Ravel would have encountered in the city’s nightlife. He also incorporated the jazz he heard into the middle section of his violin sonata, titled ‘Blues’. Parisian musical life was rich and varied.

Ravel was an innovator. While other composers remained faithful to the 19th century, a time when salons flourished and which Marcel Proust captured so masterfully in his novels, Ravel looked to the present. The exuberance of that salon world can be heard in Ernest Chausson’s Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet. Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit is full of night visions and suspense, with the devilish dwarf Scarbo casting giant shadows on the wall. A study in shadow play is Ravel admirer Pierre Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double. Clarinettist Jelmer de Moed confronts his own shadow in this unparalleled solo piece featuring live electronics.