At A Glance
Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel may seem an odd couple, separated by nationality and style, but they were contemporaries who respected each other’s music. In his early years, Strauss became the most famous composer of tone poems, including Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration. Both tell tales through their music, the first focusing on the exploits of one of literature’s most famous libertines, the second being a more personal contemplation of the journey taken by a human soul released from its physical state.
Ravel picked up on that genre several decades later when he composed La valse, a cynical critique of the 19th-century Viennese waltz, a genre both composers had adored. Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, a virtuoso who lost his right hand in World War I. He also commissioned two works from Strauss, among many other pieces; but Ravel’s Concerto, which Wittgenstein resisted at first, is the one that keeps his name most alive in posterity.
