This in an article that appeared in slightly altered form in the January 2012 issue of Strings magazine.

Tempo and Structure Problems in the Ravel Trio

or

(Why Your Ravel Trio is Too Slow)

by Joel Wizansky

The mere mention of the Ravel Piano Trio to a chamber musician generally elicits an attenuated series of oohs and ahs. It is unique in the repertoire in its sensuality, luxuriance of color, and brilliance - as well as its extraordinary difficulty.

In particular, who can resist the exotic, seductive languor of the opening movement? As a performer, I have surely been as entranced as any by the intoxicating allure of this music. And yet I have a shameful confession to make (cover the ears of small children here): as a listener I have often found this movement slightly tedious.

How could this be? How could music of such deliciousness, and such exquisite craftsmanship, fail to utterly captivate the ear? The last time I performed the trio, I gave quite a bit of thought to this question. My current conclusion is that due to a combination of structural peculiarities and performance difficulties, we generally do not play the first movement in the manner in which it was intended. In short, I believe we almost all play it too slowly.

What are the factors that inexorably lead us astray in this piece? The first is, most simply put, its extreme difficulty. I am speaking now not even of the terrors of the piano part, or the alpine cello writing, though we know about these; I am thinking merely of the problems presented by the very first page. Already the opening piano solo is treachery itself: to balance the chords so as to make the melody clear, yet beautifully shaped, to color and express the harmonies, all in pp, meanwhile making the irregular meter clear, yet perfectly smooth, with the right lilt to the syncopations....

And for the strings - simply to play the opening octave melody in tune is already problematic, then to match the intricate articulations and blend the color and vibrato in the exquisite way one imagines, and fuse that in turn with the chords in the piano; and then for everyone to feel this unusual meter together, ultimately moving as one so intuitively that the rhythm is beautifully hypnotic and consistent, yet not repetitive and tedious....

The point of this litany of woes is not to scare anyone from attempting the piece ever again (happily far beyond my powers in any case); the point is that they seem inevitably to lead us, as we wrestle with them, to play slower and slower.

The meter is another factor contributing to this tendency. The 3+2+3 Basque rhythm Ravel employs, which gives the movement so much of its charm, is less intuitive to us (unless we are Basque, I suppose) than the compound meters we encounter more regularly. As a result we are liable to remain at what would otherwise be a preliminary stage: counting it in eight. The fact that the metronome markings are of necessity by the eighth note probably reinforces this tendency as well. 

The music however is clearly in three - as surely as 9/8 is in three or 6/8 in two - with the mere peculiarity that the beats aren’t all of the same length. One construes the tempo marking Modéré quite differently counting by the dotted quarter/quarter than by the eighth. (An interesting experiment is to recompose the opening, adding an extra eighth to the second beat to make 9/8 time, or omitting the second beat and making 6/8 time; I think most will find themselves immediately taking a more flowing tempo.)

It is worth noting further in this regard that the zortzico, the Basque dance on which this meter is based, is a fast dance, actually in 5/8 (Ravel adds an extra beat of three eighths to the measure), with a decidedly angular swing to it. Its typical pace is in fact much like the ♪=192 tempo of rehearsal 2 in the trio. Of course Ravel, refracting this folk rhythm through the hazy prism of his Impressionist language, softens its edges and slows it down considerably. Nonetheless it seems reasonable that some vestige of its original spirit should remain.

So if these difficulties tend to lead us toward slower and slower tempos, let us now consider why this is especially perilous in this particular movement, by looking at some of the structural issues inherent in the music itself.

Ravel molds the first movement around a very lovely and very clever device. The movement is more or less in sonata form, but in an inversion of the traditional pattern, the second theme, the beautiful violin melody at rehearsal 4:

appears in the tonic A minor during the exposition, and in the relative C Major in the recapitulation. Moreover, rather than transposing the theme when it returns, in the usual manner, Ravel presents it at the same pitch but reharmonizes it in the new key. Thus the melody from 10 to 12 (and even beyond in modified form) consists, for the most part, of exactly the same notes as 4 to 6, now reinterpreted harmonically in C Major instead of A minor. This trick is at once a poetic inspiration and a compositional tour de force.

Ravel reverses the traditional key sequence presumably to obtain the emotional trajectory he desires for the movement: the aching melancholy of the A minor theme is transformed at the end to radiant consolation in C Major. And indeed the magical effect this creates is central to our whole experience of this movement. However, if we go back for a moment to look at the exposition, we observe that this technique also creates a grave structural danger:  the first and second themes are both in the same key.

From the earliest origins of sonata form through all its various 19th and 20th century incarnations, the key differentiation of first and second theme groups has been its most fundamental characteristic. (For an example of a very young composer who has not yet realized this principal, listen to the first movement of Chopin’s Sonata No. 1 - and you will understand why you’ve never heard this piece.) Of course, writing in the 20th century Ravel is under no obligation - moral, esthetic or otherwise - to conform to classical models. But an exposition which remains in one key will always run the risk of feeling static, of lacking dramatic movement or tension.

To avoid this monotony Ravel, no fool, writes a ‘bridge’ passage that ranges far and wide harmonically, leaping to c# minor for the fast passage at rehearsal 2, then back, by way of F#, B and C, to E as a dominant. The long dominant pedal that ensues is typical of sonata form, except that rather than leading us to a new key it brings us right back to the tonic, arrived at (or returned to) exactly at 4.

So how do we experience this journey that actually goes nowhere? It is here that the question of tempo comes into play, for as I hear it the whole perception of this opening changes according to the speed at which it passes.

At the andante-ish tempos we sometimes hear, the tonic is more firmly grounded at the outset, the sense of modulation more pronounced, the weight of the dominant pedal seven bars before 4 becomes greater, and the arrival at 4 more definitive. In other words, with the structure thus distended, we perceive this opening rather like a traditional sonata exposition. We feel as we approach 4 that we have gone on an expedition, and are at last arriving at, presumably, a new place. When the new place however proves to be after all the same old place, and when we stay there a goodly while more (and in yet slower tempo – Ravel’s indication plus lent qu’au début makes us duty bound to play slower here than whatever we started with, which often amounts to downright slow) – as lovely as the music is, this creates a subconscious sense of stagnation or formlessness, the root I suspect of the restlessness I have often felt.

At the more moving tempo the composer indicates, however, the whole sense of the opening is more fluid. The establishment of the tonic at the beginning is more tenuous, and the subsequent modulations seem more transitory, more a whirlwind of color and excitement than a true new direction. The dominant pedal is then less emphatic, less portentous of an arrival; as a result, the new theme at 4 feels in effect more of a continuation of the original A minor, rather than a return to it. The second theme doesn’t so much arrive as remain floating in the ethereal orbit of the opening. (This feeling is also abetted if one takes the rallentissez in the measures before 4 as slowing more or less into the new tempo).

Thus in this approach the first part of the movement actually feels somewhat less like a true sonata exposition, more of a free discourse, presenting two main ideas, centered in A minor. Interesting is the irony that hearing it essentially in one key seems less static than hearing it as modulating and coming back. Perhaps it is the frustrated expectation of sonata form contrast that weakens the latter; perhaps also the former makes it easier to hear the true trajectory of the movement, the journey (or ‘ascension’) from A minor to C Major.

What then exactly is the solution I propose? I have hinted at it already in referring to the “tempo the composer indicates”, for it turns out that Ravel’s metronome markings, which at first blush seem very fast, are really about right. A disclaimer here: I say this not at all as a doctrinaire proponent of metronome markings; I am in general mindful of Brahms’s admonition to a colleague that “so far at least as my experience goes, everyone has later repented the markings he has given out… I myself have never believed that my blood and a machine could get on so well together.” But it seems that in this case the “Swiss watchmaker”, as Stravinsky referred to Ravel, got it right.

Once we get past the initial difficulties of execution, Ravel’s tempo, along with providing a more convincing harmonic framework, improves the overall flow and logic of the music as well. The opening piano solo coheres better as a four-bar phrase, its exquisite symmetry more palpable. The cello phrase at the fifth bar of 1 emerges as a more natural continuation of the theme, the subsequent acceleration (which has often felt unsettlingly premature to me) is less abrupt, and so the very fast tempos at 2 and 3 arrive more organically and feel less dissociated from the opening material.

Finally, Ravel’s ♪=112 for the second theme (misprinted as 122 in the Durand score, but correct in the parts) is slower than the opening but is not slow, it still moves in three and allows for a lullaby-like swing across the whole measure. (Note that 112 remains the underlying tempo for the entire second theme group: the descending violin line at 5 is slightly slower, then the misterioso passage at 6 is back to 112.)

Though I have focussed on the problem of the opening tempo, the danger at the second theme is at least equally great. As suggested earlier, if it is too slow this section ends up sprawling endlessly to the point of sounding like a true slow movement, and as totally gorgeous as every single note of it is, the listener begins to feel utterly adrift. (A cardinal principle of all music making: it doesn’t matter how beautiful it is on page five if they stopped listening on page four.)

This suggests another way of describing the danger, a sort of structural corollary to the risk of harmonic stagnation: the piece can easily feel as if it begins with slow music, followed rather suddenly by fast music, followed by more slow music. By the time we emerge from a second quasi-adagio into yet more dreamy music at the six sharps, we have lost all sense of narrative tension in the music. Perhaps the simplest way to put the matter is this: to be successful, this movement must feel like a fast movement – just a very moderate one.

Finally, a few thoughts about tempo relationships in the second half of the movement. Note that the pacing of the second theme in the recapitulation, in its C Major transformation, is analogous to that of the exposition, only the whole thing is slower. Thus the basic tempo, Lent, is ♪=100 (and if you continue to count in three this is indeed lent); the violin free fall at 11 is again more languid still (here Ravel’s marking of ♪=80 is truly très lent as advertised, but can still be felt in a flexible and very broad three); and again the main tempo (now 100) returns, after a ritardando, at 12.

Important also for the drama of the movement is the transition into this slower version of the second theme. Although the melody begins in the cello at 10, the music in still in transition harmonically, dynamically and motivically (the diminution of the second theme that runs throughout the development is in the process of devolving back to its original form):

In order that we hear this wonderful unwinding clearly, the tempo should also still be in transition; thus Presque lent at 10 ought not to be suddenly slower, I believe, but flow directly out of the rallentando the bar before, and continue relaxing gradually all the way to the piano solo at Lent. (Of course this may not be the most agreeable idea to the cellist who is groping around in thumb position…)

A last tempo marking that is often overlooked is at the very end. The coda begins with the memory of the first theme at 13, still in the prevailing ♪=100 tempo. The last line however, after another ritardando, is marked Mouvement du début (un peu retenu) - that is, basically the original opening tempo (132!), only a little slower. In other words, considerably faster than what came before. This should come as good news to the string players, who often sound hung out to dry as they gamely endeavor to sustain their precarious harmonics for what seems like forever. And musically, instead of an interminable, Mahlerian dissolution into the empyrean, the ending when played at the indicated tempo becomes almost fleeting, vanishing cryptically as into fog over water. This is much more in proportion and in character with the rest of the movement: with the tolling of a distant bell and a last, half-imagined strumming of an unseen guitar, the music remains suspended, floating, enigmatic, propelling tension forward to what may come next.

To return in closing to my initial confession, I have always felt vaguely guilty at harboring secret doubts about the architecture of this movement. Was it possible that Ravel’s daring structure was simply slightly flawed, and that this luscious movement, despite all our best efforts, was destined to lag in places? Now however I believe with increasing confidence that if we can stare down its difficulties and play it in the way it was intended, with the right sense of flow and relationship among the ideas, it can be as unfailingly compelling, as seamlessly mesmerizing, as it is ravishingly beautiful.