Gaspard de la nuit - believe the hype

It's a while since I've written because I've been completely taken up with preparing Ravel's 'Gaspard de la nuit' and 'La Valse', which I finally performed last week after many months of work. Gaspard is one of those works which is sometimes referred to as 'the hardest piece ever written' in piano folklore. Other favoured contendors for the title are Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto and Balakirev's Islamey. Then we move into the super-virtuosity of Alkan and the brain-twisting complexities of Sorabji's 'Opus Clavicembalisticum'. Of course, there can be no decisive winner in this contest - every pianist has different strengths and weaknesses. A friend from school, David Horne, could play repeated octaves faster than the devil himself and could rattle off Islamey without much trouble; learning that would probably land me in the sanitorium. But I remember him asking me how I made a particular sound on the piano and no amount of demonstrating could help him grasp it. When I initially looked at Gaspard, I thought it would suit me quite well - it is very much focussed on effects of sonority - and while I certainly found it taxing to learn, it was only two weeks before the performances that I started to appreciate quite what a challenge it is.

Learning a new piece is an unpredictable process - sometimes the work proceeds very quickly at the beginning then more slowly later. Sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes it's all slow or all quick. But in my experience there's always a final 'hump' to get over, when I can just about play the piece at speed but it feels a bit awkward and uncomfortable. Normally this only takes a few days at most to overcome but with Gaspard it took weeks (and even now I'm not quite 'over the hump'). Scarbo, the 3rd movement, has the most fearsome reputation, and indeed it goes by so quickly with so few regular patterns that it is as much a challenge for the concentration as the fingers. But to me even worse is the first movement, Ondine, which is essentially a very simple piece: a long, hypnotic melody with shimmering accompaniment. Ravel's depiction of the water nymph trying to seduce a mortal man is an astounding achievement, both in its musical effect and its imaginitive exploration of piano technique. Unfortunately for the performer, technical feats which would be rather tricky at a moderate volume here become appallingly difficult because they have to be played almost inaudibly but absolutely evenly. I think this might be the cruelest piece I've ever played because the amazing atmosphere Ravel creates can be broken in a moment if there is a brief lapse of control; it's as if someone gives you a priceless Ming vase then tells you to carry it across black ice wearing slippery shoes. The strange thing is, Ravel was a mediocre pianist at best (there are a couple of recordings of him playing), and I struggle to understand how a composer of such limited pianistic ability was able to create a work which explores the possibilities of the piano in such a prodigiously creative fashion.

So, how were the performances? Well, frankly I felt a bit daunted in the first concert, aware of the scale of the challenge, and I wasn't satisfied with the results. That made me very nervous thinking about the second concert which was at a piano summer school at Chetham's school, Manchester - so many pianists listening! More on that in the next entry, because there's a lot to say about it. But, suffice it to say, after this second performance I was starting to feel like this could be an enormously satisfying piece to perform.