Today is the 12th June 2022, so the centenary of this roll is fast approaching. Just so that everyone knows, this audio recording was made on a 1922 Hamburg Steinway Duo-Art grand piano in south London, belonging to Denis Hall of the Pianola Institute, and lovingly restored and regulated by him. The track comes from a CD on the Pierian label, whose player piano music was mostly taken from Welte-Mignon rolls by the late Kenneth Caswell in Austin, Texas. Denis and I visited Ken many times, as part of holidays in the USA, and because Ken didn't have a Duo-Art piano, he asked Denis to provide the Ravel Duo-Art recordings for the CD. This particular roll is a difficult one to capture, and there is another recording on a number of TH-cam channels in which the opening two-note figuration makes the second note either louder, or at least equally loud as the first, which was clearly not Ravel's intention, if you look at his manuscript score, which is on a video on the Preston Atkins channel. As far as I can tell, the other recording originally came from the Klavier LP label, from another Steinway Duo-Art grand belonging to the late Harold Powell in Los Angeles, in which the dynamics are less controlled. Duo-Art dynamic coding had to be very carefully edited in the 1920s, partly because the original inventors of the Duo-Art designed the halfway point of the coding at half the pneumatic power, rather than at mezzoforte, and as a result there are potentially fewer gradations at the lower levels, which means that the piano needs to be regulated by someone who understands both the technicalities and the playing style of early 20th-century pianists. Exponential graphs of musical loudness were not so commonplace a hundred years ago! Life provided quite a few hard knocks for Ravel, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that he should write music that could seem melancholy to some listeners. Some music, especially Rachmaninoff, can make me cry, but that is surely to be welcomed rather than avoided. There is an atmosphere of gentle sadness at Ravel's house in Montfort-l'Amaury, about half an hour west of Versailles, and this roll reminds me of the garden there - well worth a visit, if the local council has decided to open it up again. Rex Lawson
What a great surprise to see actual movie footage of my favorite composer. At one time there were a few short other clips of Ravel, the best one taken at his home and he was on the balcony with 2 other people and smiling. Wonder what ever happened to that? In any event, so glad you uploaded this video. I have several 78 recordings of Ravel himself playing the piano as accompaniment to some of his songs and posted one several years ago on my channel. Recorded right around 1931 no doubt.
Hi! Ravel is my favourite composer also. I had the chance to visit is a museum in Monfort Lamoury. I even had the honour of playing my one composition on his piano... After playing, the guide of the museum told me that if Maurice Ravel was alive, he would probably be very proud of me!!! What a nice complement!!! I tried to hear a recording of his voice, never could find one. I tried to meet with is the only student that was alive Manuel Rosental... When i call, i learned that he was deaf and blind... Have a nice day!!! Martin
Epic Games Where Games are Epicness Thank you. In fact, I spoken to the wife of Manuel... I am autodidacte in composition. Would you like to hear one? Let me know and I will be glad to send you a link! 🌞
I don't know why people argue about whether this is Ravel himself playing, etc., as I have seen in other videos uploaded of this! Of course, one wants to know who is playing, but ultimately, this performance is just extraordinary! One of the most outstanding, and original of Oiseaux Tristes! Too many play this piece too fast, and too abruptly, and in a way, too uniformly, which means that one is not allowed to spend time with the piece, and stay with these amazing harmonies, and hear the change of colors. I also love the quality of the sound of this recording, a little bit "muffled," and played as if "en sourdine," instead of too cristalline, or crisp, which makes the piece more intimate, contemplative, quiet, or "silenced" as it were, and which contributes to its intangibility. Rushing through this piece ruins its atmosphere, and the mood that it is trying to create. Thank you for posting this!
Gracias por esta ofrenda. Es reconfortante escuchar desde tan lejos al maestro. Eso me reafirma, para bien y para mal, en la universalidad de lo humano. Desde los Andes hasta esa vieja y entrañable Europa, desde Japón a la cuna africana de la humanidad. Ríos, lagos, océanos… et toit oiseau t'en volant sur les flots.
Thank you for the upload ! it is really moving to see a video of Ravel ,who is one of my favorite composer .It is also amazing to hear his rendition of " Oiseaux tristes " . Do you know who is the person who speaks to Ravel ? And from what year is the register of " Oiseaux tristes " ? Thank you
Amazing to hear Ravel playing his own music, and surprising too. Miroirs is a beloved piece for me. I feel like his music literally saved my life at times when I was young. When all hell was breaking loose around me I would just put my headphones on and be pulled into his world, away from mine. It's impossible to adequately express how much his music means to me still. ❤
It's obvious to me with fairly limited knowledge or experience regaridng Ravel that he was above all a very meloncholy and complex character who never really recovered from the deaths of family members or definitely not his time in the war. And this was his obsession with dissonance, and the vast majority of his pieces were minor. It seems odd the way this piece seems to drone on seemlingly endlessley with little energy and no evidence of any opturmism at all. It's like he was just depressed when writing this piece.
I have to point out a flaw in your analysis: you're attributing emotions in this piece to events that happened over a decade after it's publishing. This is a piece from his piano suite Miriors, with each piece dedicated to his friends who collectively called themselves "Les Apaches", and it was written between 1904 and 1905. Oiseaux tristes is dedicated to the Spanish piano virtuoso Ricardo Vines. The extremely impressionist style of Miriors is in fact something Ravel drifted away from as his career progressed. Perhaps the best example of this is the Piano suite he wrote after being relieved from duty in WW1 and the death of his mother, and is dedicated to his colleagues who lost their lives in the war: Le Tombeau de Couperin. It is modeled on a baroque keyboard suite, and most of the pieces being modeled after dance forms. Contemporary criticism of the piece took issue with it not being somber enough, but rather actually quite light-hearted, to which Ravel replied "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence". As to a lack of energy and optimism across his works, I couldn't disagree more, and such a criticism to me suggest you aren't really familiar with his works. Listen to the prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin, or the final movement of the suite, the Toccata, and reflect upon such criticism. Or the piano concerto in G, which is full of life. La Valse is an incredibly sincere tribute to the Viennese waltz (think Strauss and the Blue danube). Perhaps the largest distinction between Ravel and the composer he is most compared to, Debussy, was the formers emphasis on rhythm and quite contrary to his label as an impressionist, form, in most of his work.
Today is the 12th June 2022, so the centenary of this roll is fast approaching. Just so that everyone knows, this audio recording was made on a 1922 Hamburg Steinway Duo-Art grand piano in south London, belonging to Denis Hall of the Pianola Institute, and lovingly restored and regulated by him. The track comes from a CD on the Pierian label, whose player piano music was mostly taken from Welte-Mignon rolls by the late Kenneth Caswell in Austin, Texas. Denis and I visited Ken many times, as part of holidays in the USA, and because Ken didn't have a Duo-Art piano, he asked Denis to provide the Ravel Duo-Art recordings for the CD.
This particular roll is a difficult one to capture, and there is another recording on a number of TH-cam channels in which the opening two-note figuration makes the second note either louder, or at least equally loud as the first, which was clearly not Ravel's intention, if you look at his manuscript score, which is on a video on the Preston Atkins channel. As far as I can tell, the other recording originally came from the Klavier LP label, from another Steinway Duo-Art grand belonging to the late Harold Powell in Los Angeles, in which the dynamics are less controlled.
Duo-Art dynamic coding had to be very carefully edited in the 1920s, partly because the original inventors of the Duo-Art designed the halfway point of the coding at half the pneumatic power, rather than at mezzoforte, and as a result there are potentially fewer gradations at the lower levels, which means that the piano needs to be regulated by someone who understands both the technicalities and the playing style of early 20th-century pianists. Exponential graphs of musical loudness were not so commonplace a hundred years ago!
Life provided quite a few hard knocks for Ravel, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that he should write music that could seem melancholy to some listeners. Some music, especially Rachmaninoff, can make me cry, but that is surely to be welcomed rather than avoided. There is an atmosphere of gentle sadness at Ravel's house in Montfort-l'Amaury, about half an hour west of Versailles, and this roll reminds me of the garden there - well worth a visit, if the local council has decided to open it up again.
Rex Lawson
Thank you Rex for this valuable background information. Much appreciated!
What a great surprise to see actual movie footage of my favorite composer. At one time there were a few short other clips of Ravel, the best one taken at his home and he was on the balcony with 2 other people and smiling. Wonder what ever happened to that? In any event, so glad you uploaded this video. I have several 78 recordings of Ravel himself playing the piano as accompaniment to some of his songs and posted one several years ago on my channel. Recorded right around 1931 no doubt.
Hi! Ravel is my favourite composer also. I had the chance to visit is a museum in Monfort Lamoury. I even had the honour of playing my one composition on his piano... After playing, the guide of the museum told me that if Maurice Ravel was alive, he would probably be very proud of me!!! What a nice complement!!!
I tried to hear a recording of his voice, never could find one.
I tried to meet with is the only student that was alive Manuel Rosental... When i call, i learned that he was deaf and blind...
Have a nice day!!!
Martin
@@martindessureault5527 I love the commitment, and it's amazing that you talked to an actual pupil of the man!
Epic Games Where Games are Epicness Thank you.
In fact, I spoken to the wife of Manuel... I am autodidacte in composition. Would you like to hear one? Let me know and I will be glad to send you a link! 🌞
@@martindessureault5527 I would love to!
@@martindessureault5527 I'd love to!
Ravel is one of the few people I'd like to go back in time to meet.
He's among the first people I hope to meet in.. the next life🪦
I don't know why people argue about whether this is Ravel himself playing, etc., as I have seen in other videos uploaded of this! Of course, one wants to know who is playing, but ultimately, this performance is just extraordinary! One of the most outstanding, and original of Oiseaux Tristes! Too many play this piece too fast, and too abruptly, and in a way, too uniformly, which means that one is not allowed to spend time with the piece, and stay with these amazing harmonies, and hear the change of colors. I also love the quality of the sound of this recording, a little bit "muffled," and played as if "en sourdine," instead of too cristalline, or crisp, which makes the piece more intimate, contemplative, quiet, or "silenced" as it were, and which contributes to its intangibility. Rushing through this piece ruins its atmosphere, and the mood that it is trying to create. Thank you for posting this!
Exactly! On spotify they all play forto and rapido and it's not pleasant to hear, but here there's more emotion
A very well remastered recording. It has almost 0 noise at all
Alberto Mora It's a recording of a piano roll, not Ravel himself playing
Fantastic. One of the biggest composers of XX Century !
What charisma. Too bad there's so few recordings of his.
Are there any other video footages of Ravel?
Gracias por esta ofrenda. Es reconfortante escuchar desde tan lejos al maestro. Eso me reafirma, para bien y para mal, en la universalidad de lo humano. Desde los Andes hasta esa vieja y entrañable Europa, desde Japón a la cuna africana de la humanidad. Ríos, lagos, océanos… et toit oiseau t'en volant sur les flots.
Very reminiscent of Le Gibet......
Ravel plays Ravel's aesthetics including this work .
What does that mean?
Thank you for the upload ! it is really moving to see a video of Ravel ,who is one of my favorite composer .It is also amazing to hear his rendition of " Oiseaux tristes " . Do you know who is the person who speaks to Ravel ? And from what year is the register of " Oiseaux tristes " ? Thank you
Amazing to hear Ravel playing his own music, and surprising too. Miroirs is a beloved piece for me. I feel like his music literally saved my life at times when I was young. When all hell was breaking loose around me I would just put my headphones on and be pulled into his world, away from mine. It's impossible to adequately express how much his music means to me still. ❤
OMG! We are so lucky for this. Thanks, Jack.
Wonderful! Thank you for posting!
Thank you so much Jack for uploading this treasure!!
I wonder if it would be possible to know what he is saying in the video.
Formidable !!!!!!!!!!!!Merci !!!
Ravel: Oiseaux Tristes (Ravel, London, 1922) 悲傷的鳥
[抒情的鳥: 鳥的悲啼 or 鳥的動態描繪]
Such a wonderful footage!! Thank you so much
GRACIAS POR SUBIR ESTE VIDEO ES UNA JOYA...MARAVILLA VERLO AL MAESTRO EN VIVO......
Thank you for posting this. It is amazing
Merci pour ce partage. Est-ce Nijinsky avec Ravel sur la vidéo ?
Is it just me or does Ravel look like a young Richter
@Enescu Look who it is lol.
It's something in the eyes. When I look at both of their pictures it feels like they are looking at me.
@@mairaleikarte43 the eyes and the top their heads
not at all...RIchter was a large Neanderthal type while Ravel was petite and delicate
This does not sound like a recording from 1922. how did you do it?
I know I'm 7 years late but it's a piano roll :)
kh
beauty
He looks like Robert Deniro in some of his pictures
A very well made video!
Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks 👏😘
fantastic!!
Sorry, what's a piano roll?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_roll
まさかのラヴェルの動画！？
tant de compositeurs se sont prit pour Ravel - il n'y en a qu'un
❤️✨🎶🎵✨💎
Precious gem
It's obvious to me with fairly limited knowledge or experience regaridng Ravel that he was above all a very meloncholy and complex character who never really recovered from the deaths of family members or definitely not his time in the war. And this was his obsession with dissonance, and the vast majority of his pieces were minor. It seems odd the way this piece seems to drone on seemlingly endlessley with little energy and no evidence of any opturmism at all. It's like he was just depressed when writing this piece.
I have to point out a flaw in your analysis: you're attributing emotions in this piece to events that happened over a decade after it's publishing.
This is a piece from his piano suite Miriors, with each piece dedicated to his friends who collectively called themselves "Les Apaches", and it was written between 1904 and 1905.
Oiseaux tristes is dedicated to the Spanish piano virtuoso Ricardo Vines.
The extremely impressionist style of Miriors is in fact something Ravel drifted away from as his career progressed. Perhaps the best example of this is the Piano suite he wrote after being relieved from duty in WW1 and the death of his mother, and is dedicated to his colleagues who lost their lives in the war: Le Tombeau de Couperin. It is modeled on a baroque keyboard suite, and most of the pieces being modeled after dance forms. Contemporary criticism of the piece took issue with it not being somber enough, but rather actually quite light-hearted, to which Ravel replied "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence".
As to a lack of energy and optimism across his works, I couldn't disagree more, and such a criticism to me suggest you aren't really familiar with his works. Listen to the prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin, or the final movement of the suite, the Toccata, and reflect upon such criticism. Or the piano concerto in G, which is full of life. La Valse is an incredibly sincere tribute to the Viennese waltz (think Strauss and
the Blue danube). Perhaps the largest distinction between Ravel and the composer he is most compared to, Debussy, was the formers emphasis on rhythm and quite contrary to his label as an impressionist, form, in most of his work.
Bravo for your comprehensive reply 👏
guys I wonder what is he's real voice sound🤔
booming baritone
Is that Respighi with Ravel in the video?
No, it's the New York Times music critic Olin Downes
@@JackGibbonsHQso this footage likely dates from circa 1928
@@Polygor2 In New York, yes.
@@JackGibbonsHQ thanks, Jack
I wonder if there is a recording of Ravel playing his Piano Concerto?
Sadly not, but there is a recording where Ravel conducts his concertos and some other pieces
@@nicolajpiemonte8907 where
@@francesco6008 just search "Ravel Conducts Ravel" and you'll find videos and playlists.
it is a piano roll!
Oh..thanks for posting. Great!!!
if there are audio recordings from 1888, why did he do a piano roll in 1922????
Because many people still owned mechanical pianos so there was a market for piano rolls.
Quality was the problem.
Tenors and Violins sounded ok but other instruments poorly reproduced.