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Steven Osborne: wrestling with Ravel
How do you get your fingers - and brain - round one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire? Steven Osborne takes on Gaspard de la Nuit
Steven Osborne
Thu 29 Sep 2011 17.30 EDT First published on Thu 29 Sep 2011 17.30 EDT
January 2009 Next year, I'm going to be recording the complete piano works of Maurice Ravel, a composer I have loved and played since childhood, and that means I've got to tackle a piece I've long avoided, his Gaspard de la Nuit. Among pianists, Gaspard has a fearsome reputation, one of the contenders for the title of Most Difficult Piano Piece Ever Written, but I've learned a lot of very difficult pieces in the past, including virtually everything else by Ravel, and I'm quietly confident I can rise to the challenge.
Gaspard (1908) is the only piano work Ravel based on poetry and his choice of texts, three poems by Aloysius Bertrand, was darker than his usual taste. Perhaps the illness of his father was a factor: he was to die from a dementia-like malady only a month after Gaspard was completed. The first movement, Ondine, retells the myth of the water nymph who seeks to marry a human, and Ravel's music has a fragile melody decorated with all kinds of ingenious "watery" figurations.
One of the mysteries with Ravel is how a mediocre pianist (according to his contemporaries) could create such astonishing pianistic effects. The second movement, Le Gibet, depicts a corpse hanging on the gallows, as a distant bell tolls. The third is Scarbo. It's not clear to me if this poem is a portrait of a diabolical dwarf or of the poet's own madness, but the music is eerie, hectic and disturbed.
I sit at the piano and open the score for the first time; this is always a thrilling moment, like being confronted with a field of virgin snow. I love the process of learning new pieces, the highs and lows, the physical, mental and emotional stimulation, the discovery of a whole new world of feeling.
I start to work on Ondine. Hmmm, the first bar is very difficult, a fast, oscillating pattern for the right hand which has to be played very quietly. It's supposed to sound like a magical shimmer, but it's tricky to control. Never mind, I'll come back to it. The next couple of pages are similarly problematic. On to page three. Finally! Here's something I can actually play. But this turns out to be very much the exception: as I go through the piece, I discover there's hardly a bar without significant technical problems. I realise for the first time quite what an undertaking this is.
February 2009
I'm in Tokyo to play with the NHK Symphony orchestra. In between rehearsals and concerts, I'm making very slow progress on Gaspard. The mental effort of co-ordinating my fingers is enormous; it's like having to solve endless quadratic equations in my head. And what can I do with the opening? It sounds horrible. Scarbo is giving me headaches too: in places it is profoundly awkward, with the hands jumping over and under each other so rapidly it scarcely seems feasible.
March 2009
This bloody opening! I feel I've tried every possible fingering and nothing works. In desperation, I divide the notes of the first bar between my two hands rather than playing them with just one, and suddenly I see a way forward. But now I need a third hand for the melody. After much experimentation, I realise I can make these pages work with a complex and unpredictable redistribution of notes between the hands. I'm elated. Then my heart sinks as I realise I've just given myself an extra month's work.
April 2009
As I work on Ondine, I have a moment of revelation. Suddenly all those little notes I'm struggling with seem insignificant, and I feel just how pure and vulnerable the melody is. It sounds less like a seduction than a genuine appeal for companionship, and I wonder whether this resonates with how uncomfortable Ravel felt around people; he was famously sarcastic and aloof, even with friends, and he never married. Yet in his music, sadness and longing keep breaking through.
May 2009
In Kuala Lumpur now. Ondine is improving, but I'm really struggling with Scarbo. The hands have to move like lightning and my brain just can't keep up. I'm starting to wonder if I will ever get to the end of this process.
June 2009
Chained to the piano.
20 July 2009
Banchory, just outside Aberdeen, and my first performance of Gaspard. I'm nervous. I can play it, I think, but it doesn't feel at all comfortable. Part of the great difficulty of the piece is that none of its complications are gratuitous – every note is part of a precise effect, and the textures are generally very transparent. In other words, there's nowhere to hide. I'm self-conscious during the performance and various bits go wrong.
22 July 2009
The second performance. I'm really nervous now – it's at Chetham's summer school for pianists. One of the teachers tells me: "The last time I heard Gaspard, the performer had a terrible memory lapse in the last movement. I think he missed out two whole pages." A pang of terror goes through me. I gave a talk on performance anxiety a couple of months previously; OK, here's a chance to put it into practice. After a lot of thinking, some breathing exercises and a long bath, I get myself into a more relaxed frame of mind. The concert goes well.
December 2009
I'm jolted awake by the sound of the bin lorry coming down the road. I rush outside only to slip on the ice and land on my left hand. I get it x-rayed and discover that I've broken my middle finger. Bugger.
January 2010
The first casualty of my injury is a recital tour with my wife, Jean Johnson, on clarinet. Musician couples often have to live quite separate lives owing to all the travelling, and we were both looking forward to this, particularly after a long period when I've been obsessed with learning Gaspard. Instead, I mooch about at home, depressed and worrying that my finger won't heal properly, while Jeannie does her best to cheer me up. I play my first few concerts at the end of January with nine fingers. Thankfully, the finger heals well in the following months.
June 2010
I've now performed Gaspard several times over the last year and I find it a deeply involving and profound piece to play. Performing is a mysterious business. Why is music so precious to so many people? How can feeling be summoned out of a piano? And what is the nature of that deep silence that can envelop us as we listen?
Back to practicalities though. I have a problem: I begin recording Ravel's piano works next month, but I can't find the right piano. Ravel's music needs the greatest range of sound, from whispering to roaring, from brittle clarity to vague washes of sound, and very few pianos can do it. I travel around the country trying as many pianos as I can in a state of mounting anxiety, until finally I find a beautiful instrument in Southampton. Great relief.
At Southampton station, the train is already on the platform; sprinting for it I run into a bollard, which makes me do a complete somersault. Ah, the glamorous world of the concert pianist. My big toe hurts. The next day I discover it's broken. I apply for a frequent visitor card at A&E.
12-14 September 2010
I'm recording Gaspard, along with Miroirs, La Valse and more. It's enormously hard work, maybe eight or nine hours a day of the most intense concentration, and my mounting fatigue is mirrored by steadily increasing numbers of chocolate biscuits, cups of tea, expletives, and encouraging words from producer Andrew Keener. On the final afternoon, my arm muscles turn to jelly. Somehow I manage to complete the last difficult passages. The only thing left to record now is Le Gibet, and in my exhaustion I slip effortlessly into its hypnotic stillness. As the final take ends, I realise I feel more tired than at almost any other time in my life. But there is also gratitude – for music, for this amazing job I have, for Andrew's help, and above all for being finished. We drive to a nearby pub, and I'm handed a pint of ale. I smell it, put the glass to my lips, take my first sip … Even though the beer is mediocre, this is a perfect moment.
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