A lighthearted piece for piano and small orchestra, the Piano Concerto in G is Ravel’s tribute to jazz (his most outspoken tribute, but not his first; like Debussy and Stravinsky, Ravel was fascinated by jazz long before he came to the United States in 1928 and haunted music clubs in Harlem). Americans like George Gershwin and Aaron Copland incorporate jazz accents in their compositions in a fairly direct way (see page 349). With Ravel everything is slightly skewed, as if through a special filter, with a delicacy and elegance that we think of as characteristically French, perhaps, and that Ravel projects more clearly than any other composer.

First Movement (Allegramente) The first theme is not jazzy. A long, lively, folklike tune is presented in the sort of fabulous orchestration that is this composer’s hallmark: After a whiplash — literally — a piccolo plays the tune with syncopated pizzicato (plucked) string chords and the piano shimmering in the background. But the tune really belongs to a special high trumpet (trumpet in C), which takes it over from the piccolo, with the syncopated chords barked out by the other brass.

The piano now introduces a second theme that recalls the blues — not directly, but clearly enough. A third theme suggests romantic popular songs of the 1930s. Typical of early jazz is Ravel’s use of short breaks, instrumental interludes between lines of a song lasting just one or two measures (see page 386). He catches this device perfectly with the high clarinet (E-flat clarinet) and a muted trumpet cutting into theme 2, with swishing sounds from the piano and the harp.

At a later point, the harp plays theme 2 itself, in a dreamlike episode that brings this busy movement to a state of near suspension.

After the piano and orchestra have presented themes 2 and 3, the piano engages in vigorous, propulsive music of the sort that often leads to cadences in concertos (see page 185). A new syncopated motive strongly implies that a cadence is coming, though the actual resolution is disguised.

In this clear presentation of first theme, second theme group, and music announcing a cadence, Ravel harks back to the sonata form of earlier composers (see page 162). But he does so in the freest possible way. In fact, there is no development section at all, but only a quick move to scales in the piano that prepare the way for the recapitulation of theme 1. Ravel drew on classical tradition but at the same time invented his own super-clear and listener-friendly form for the Piano Concerto in G.

At the very end of the first movement, Ravel borrows a favorite device invented by Debussy, a long series of parallel chords. The effect could hardly be more different: Debussy’s chords — in Clouds, for example (see page 313) — are piano, legato, silky, vague, and atmospheric; Ravel’s are fortissimo and staccato, crisp and clear.