Program Notes · Berliner Philharmoniker · 12 February 2026
A Frenchman in New York and a Lost Viennese Genius
v3 · updated 30 September 2026 · 9 sources
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v3 · 30 September 2026 · Further reading added
- Added three recommended books: Ravel, Maurice Ravel, The Cambridge Companion to Ravel
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v2 · 30 September 2026 · Sources added; house-style edit
- Added 6 sources
- Removed em dashes
- Ravel bio: father described as Swiss-born engineer and inventor
- Ravel bio: removed unsourced watchmaker comparison
- Ravel bio: removed unsourced Harlem/Savoy Ballroom/Gershwin/Cotton Club/Ellington details of the 1928 tour
- Ravel Piano Concerto: 'ideas dated back nearly two decades' corrected to a Basque concerto idea from 1906; removed unsourced Oxford-London train quote
- Ravel Piano Concerto: 'sixteen-city' tour softened to 'tour across Europe'
- Ravel Piano Concerto: unsourced quotes replaced by Ravel's sourced statement of intent
- Ravel Piano Concerto: removed 'five distinct themes'; Adagio melody now tied to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, 'without repetition' and 'longer than the Mozart' removed
- Ravel Piano Concerto: finale 'ends exactly as it began' softened
- Rott bio: removed 'illegitimate' and 'celebrated comic actor'; father's death given as 1876
- Rott bio: 'Bruckner's favorite organ pupil' softened; removed unsourced Bruckner jury quote
- Rott bio: Brahms's verdict marked as alleged, with the sourced quotation
- Rott bio: train incident dated 1880 (not October) and marked as alleged; committal dated 1881; removed 'briefly recovered'
- Rott bio: removed unsourced account of Bruckner weeping and blaming Brahms; Bruckner and Mahler at the funeral per sources
- Rott bio: Mahler quote corrected to the sourced wording; 'homages' softened to echoes in the First Symphony's second movement
- Rott Symphony: first movement at the competition 'at nineteen' corrected to shortly after turning twenty
- Rott Symphony: removed Paul Banks attribution and 'musicological sensation' quote; rediscovery in the Austrian National Library and conductor Gerhard Samuel added per sources
- Rott Symphony: scherzo-to-Mahler link restated as sourced resemblance
- Rott Symphony: first-movement horn 'sunrise' replaced by sourced hymn-like theme; Adagio keys removed
- Rott Symphony: finale 'prelude and fugue' and 'unmistakable quotation' of Brahms's First softened
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v1 · 11 June 2026 · First published
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major22 min
About the Work
Ravel began work on his Piano Concerto in G major in 1929, though he had toyed with the idea of a concerto on Basque themes as early as 1906. He worked on it alongside a second concerto, the dramatic Left Hand Concerto commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein, and completed the G major in 1931.
He had intended to premiere the work himself, but poor health forced him to entrust the solo part to the pianist Marguerite Long, to whom he dedicated the score. The premiere took place at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on January 14, 1932, with Ravel conducting. It was an immediate triumph, and composer and soloist went on to take it on tour across Europe.
Ravel named Mozart and Saint-Saëns as his models; his only wish, he said, was to write “a genuine concerto, that is, a brilliant work, clearly highlighting the soloist’s virtuosity, without seeking to show profundity.” Yet beneath its sparkling surface lies remarkable sophistication: Basque folk melodies, Spanish colors, and jazz idioms are woven together with classical clarity.
What to listen for tonight:
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First movement (Allegramente): A whip-crack launches us into a kaleidoscope of themes: a jaunty Basque-flavored tune on piccolo, Spanish inflections, and unmistakable jazz colors with blue notes in clarinet and trumpet. Listen for the unusual sequence of cadenzas: first harp, then woodwinds, finally the piano.
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Second movement (Adagio assai): The concerto’s emotional heart. The piano enters alone with an endless, hypnotic melody spanning 34 bars, inspired by the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. When the English horn takes up the theme, the piano floats ethereal embellishments around it. This movement is often called one of the most beautiful in all piano literature.
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Third movement (Presto): A breathless finale that returns to the first movement’s high spirits. Jazz rhythms propel the music forward in a virtuosic race between soloist and orchestra. In a characteristic Ravelian touch, the movement snaps shut as abruptly as it began.
Hans Rott (1858–1884)
Symphony No. 1 in E major55 min
About the Work
The Symphony in E major, composed between 1878 and 1880, was Rott’s most ambitious undertaking and the work that cost him everything. He submitted the first movement to the Conservatory’s composition competition shortly after turning twenty, but it won no prize; he then completed the remaining movements, pouring into them all his hopes and despair.
The symphony lay forgotten for over a century until the score resurfaced in the Austrian National Library in the late 1980s. Its world premiere came only in 1989, when Gerhard Samuel conducted the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, 105 years after Rott’s death.
What makes this symphony so remarkable is how clearly it anticipates Mahler’s musical world, composed before Mahler had written a single symphony of his own. The third movement bears a remarkable resemblance to the second movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, written eight years later. Yet the symphony is no mere historical curiosity; it speaks with its own distinctive voice, combining Bruckner’s grand scale, Wagner’s dramatic intensity, and Brahms’s craft into something genuinely new.
What to listen for tonight:
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First movement: The movement grows from an expansive, hymn-like theme, 28 bars long. Listen for how it returns in later movements, binding the symphony together.
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Second movement (Adagio): A profound slow movement that closes with a noble, chorale-like hymn.
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Third movement (Scherzo): The movement most famously connected to Mahler. Listen for the ghostly waltz and the way Rott constantly delays the expected return of the opening music, building irresistible forward momentum.
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Fourth movement: Rott’s most original conception. Slow sections frame a busy, contrapuntal central passage, the work of a trained organist. Listen for a broad theme that many listeners compare to the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony (the very composer who rejected him). The cyclic theme from the first movement gradually infiltrates the closing pages, one of Rott’s most ingenious inventions, as the work settles into a Wagnerian, resigned peace.
Tonight's Artists
Lang Langpiano
Lang Lang, born in Shenyang, China, in 1982, is one of the most widely known classical musicians in the world. He began piano lessons at the age of three, studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and in 1997 moved to the United States to study with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. His breakthrough came in 1999 at the Ravinia Festival, when, still a teenager, he stepped in at the last moment for the ailing André Watts to play Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a performance that made him famous almost overnight. He has since appeared with the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and recorded widely for Deutsche Grammophon and Sony Classical. A committed advocate of music education, he launched the Lang Lang International Music Foundation in 2008 to bring music to children, and in 2013 was designated a United Nations Messenger of Peace with a special focus on global education.
Further reading
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Accessible Ravel
Roger Nichols, Yale University Press 2013
A modern, readable biography of Ravel that follows his 1928 American tour and the jazz-tinged Piano Concerto in G major that came out of those years.
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Accessible Maurice Ravel: A Life
Benjamin Ivry, Welcome Rain Publishers 2000
A brief, personal portrait of Ravel the man, from his Basque roots to the late years that produced the G major Concerto.
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Deeper The Cambridge Companion to Ravel
Deborah Mawer (ed.), Cambridge University Press 2000
Essays on Ravel’s style, sources and influences, including the jazz and blues elements heard in the G major Concerto.