🇫🇷Joseph Maurice Ravel ： Frontispice

Written for two pianos and five hands, this brief work is nevertheless highly original. It does not settle around a clear tonal center; instead, several voices overlap with different movements and rhythms, forming a chain of fragmentary sonorities. Rather than asking the performer to sing a sustained melody, it invites attention to the placement of sounds and the changing resonance, with contrasts between tension and stillness emerging within its concise span. In performance, it is important to balance the individual voices, avoid mechanically forcing the displaced beats into alignment, and preserve the pulse of the whole. Listening closely to the resonance left after each short sound, and unifying the movement of the five hands as a single sound world, brings out the piece’s sharp, transparent character.