Grand Rapids Symphony: Ravel's Piano Concerto

“Parlez-vous français?” No translations needed, because the first half of this program gives us a chance to dive deep into that particular and unique quality of French music-color. Like the great impressionist painters French composers of the 20th and now 21st centuries love exploiting the thousands of sonorities the modern orchestra can produce. The first masters of this were Debussy and Ravel, and Ravel’s G major piano concerto says it all from the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean in the outer movements to the dark bluesy influence of American jazz in the sultry slow section. France’s latest export in this love of color is Marc-André Dalbavie who makes no bones about his love of tints and tones, titling his very accessible 2001 tone poem “Color”. And while he’s not French, Dmitri Shostakovich, in his first symphony gives us a riot of Russian color, with a brilliant first symphony, written as a conservator graduation exercise at age nineteen!