Tzigane, Concert Rhapsody for violin and orchestra 

Composition and premiere: Ravel wrote the violin and keyboard version of Tzigane shortly before its April 26, 1924, premiere in London by violinist Jelly d’Arányi and piano-luthéalist Henri Gil-Marchex (see below). The first performance of the orchestral version was on November 30, 1924, at the Concerts Colonne, Paris, Gabriel Pierné conducting and Jelly d’Arányi, soloist. First BSO performance: February 26, 1925, Serge Koussevitzky conducting, Paul Kochanski, soloist. First Tanglewood performance (orchestra version): BSO, July 7, 2012, Michael Stern conducting, Joshua Bell, soloist. 

During one of Maurice Ravel’s visits to London, following a private musicale during which the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi performed the composer’s recent Sonata for Violin and Cello with the cellist Hans Kindler, Ravel asked Mlle. d’Arányi—who was a grandniece of the famed Austro-Hungarian violinist-composer-conductor-teacher Joseph Joachim—to play him some Gypsy melodies. This went on until five in the morning and presumably was the first event in the history of Ravel’s Tzigane for violin and orchestra. Ravel completed the Tzigane (which means “Gypsy”) just shortly before its premiere in April 1924; the orchestral version was given for the first time half a year later. On both these occasions, the soloist was Mlle. d’Arányi, who was dedicatee of the violin sonatas by Vaughan Williams and Bartók as well as of the present work. It was also she who spurred the unearthing of Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto in 1937 by claiming the composer’s spirit had visited her. 

When it was new, a striking feature of Tzigane in its original violin-and-piano version was Ravel’s use of the recently devised piano-luthéal, a modified grand piano that allowed the player to alter the timbre of the instrument by employing harmonium-like stops set above the keyboard to produce a variety of sounds (lute- and harpsichord-like, as well as the normal timbre of the piano). One of these stops—fittingly, for Tzigane—created a sound similar to the Hungarian cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer whose use in that country is traceable back to the 16th century. Ravel also called for this instrument in his opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges (“The Child and the Magic Spells”), completed in 1925. 

In any event, the first performance of Tzigane astounded both the composer and the audience, especially given the limited rehearsal time. Ravel’s ability to write for an instrument he had never studied also attracted notice. The reviewer for the London Times, however, was skeptical. Describing the piece as “rhapsodical in the literal meaning of the word, being a series of episodes in the Hungarian manner strung together,” he was “puzzled to understand what M. Ravel is at. Either the work is a parody of the Liszt-Hubay-Brahms-Joachim school of Hungarian violin music…or it is an attempt to get away from the limited sphere of his previous compositions to infuse into his work a little of the warm blood it needs.” Such commentary seems superfluous. Tzigane is, simply and straightforwardly, a virtuoso showpiece, opening with an extended “quasi cadenza” for the soloist and, along the way, using just about every violinist trick in the book. 

MARC MANDEL 

Marc Mandel joined the staff of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1978 and managed the BSO’s program book from 1979 until his retirement as Director of Program Publications in 2020.