Ravel

Abstract Joseph-Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure near Saint-Jean-deLuz, Basses-Pyrenees, on 7 March 1875 and died in Paris on 28 According to the critic Gustave Samazeuilh, some of the music of the first and third movements of this Concerto originated about 1914 in an unfinished score for piano and orchestra titled Zaspiakbat (Basque for “the seven are one”). Ravel originally intended to play the Concerto itself on his 1928 American tour, but as things turned out, he only began work on the score in 1929. The next plan was for him to give the premiere in March 1931 with Willem Mengelberg and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, but the project was delayed when Ravel received and immediately got to work on a commission to write a concerto for piano lefthand for the Austrian one-armed pianist, Paul Wittgenstein. Only after that was accomplished in 1930 did Ravel return to “his” concerto, completing it Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born at Semyonovo, district of Starorusky, Russia, on 1 April 1873 and died in Beverly Hills, California, on 28 March 1943.