Introduction and Allegro for Harp

Program Note:

Ravel wrote the Introduction and Allegro for seven chamber players in 1905, fresh on the heels of his lustrous String Quartet. The Introduction and Allegro closes a period of substantial strides in Ravel’s young career, though he was certainly frustrated by his failure to garner the prestigious Prix de Rome, the Paris Conservatory’s highest honor (won by Debussy among many others). Ravel had submitted compositions for the Prix de Rome competition from 1900 to 1905. Introduction and Allegro marks the final creation of his “student” period.
The Erard firm, a major manufacturer of the pedal harp and in competition with Pleyel to promote its new chromatic harp, hired Ravel to write a piece to display the expressive range of their instrument. (Pleyel had contracted Debussy in 1903 to showcase its own instrument). Despite the pressure of a deadline from Erard, Ravel apparently took an invitation to enjoy a private cruise around northern Europe and was then forced to complete the commission, as he put it, in “a week of frantic work and three sleepless nights.”
The result, Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for Harp, accompanied by String Quartet, Flute, and Clarinet is a harp concerto in all but name. It opens onto a hushed, serene world in mode and proceeds to explore both traditional and non-traditional timbral effects from the full ensemble. Resonances of Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune” (1894) are not much below the surface. The musical figures are terse and lively, and the main theme in major is characteristically—for Ravel—bright and scintillating. One highlight is the centrally-placed cadenza for solo harp, coming hard on the heels of the piece’s dynamic climax. Elements of sonata form development and reprise will be heard, and the basic musical material is all laid out in the opening introduction.
The piece may not be one of Ravel’s most ambitious, and the composer clearly had mixed feelings about it: he did not include it in his own catalog, yet he programmed it often and even recorded it himself in 1924 (Ravel conducting). He certainly succeeds very well in what he has tried to do—to situate the modern chromatic harp in the center of familiar chamber instruments, and to write an impressionist composition full of sensuality and harmonic color. At its premiere in 1907 the piece impressed a Parisian audience flush with excitement over Russian music, and it has not left the concert repertoire ever since.

(c) Jason Stell