Daniel Snowman
Clockmaker & Pirate
Ravel
By Roger Nichols
Yale University Press 352pp £25
Roger Nichols has lived with the music of Ravel for a lifetime and has written and broadcast copiously about the composer and his works. For this impressive new biography, he has delved into a wide range of sources, among them the letters and diaries of many of Ravel’s contemporaries (notably his friend the pianist Ricardo Viñes), and has been able to call upon interviews conducted over the years with various Ravel experts, some of whom (Lennox Berkeley, Gaby Casadesus, Vlado Perlemuter, Manuel Rosenthal) knew and worked with the composer. The book teems with famous names – Picasso and Cocteau, Stravinsky and Satie, performers such as Chaliapin and the pianist Marguerite Long, and conductors including Toscanini (with whom Ravel crossed swords) and Rosenthal (his pupil and protégé). The volume includes a detailed chronology and a catalogue of Ravel’s works.
Today, as in Ravel’s own time, this most protean of composers tends to divide music lovers. Everyone seems to have his or her own Ravel. To some, he is a master of the tightly structured miniature (especially in a number of the piano pieces), elegant impressionism and sinuously
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘I have to change’, Miles Davis once said. ‘It’s like a curse.’
@rwilliams1947 tells the story of how Davis made jazz cool.
Richard Williams - In Their Own Sweet Way
Richard Williams: In Their Own Sweet Way - 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lo...
literaryreview.co.uk
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson - review by Terry Eagleton via @Lit_Review
for the new(ish) April issue of @Lit_Review I commissioned a number of pieces, including Deborah Levy on Bowie, Rosa Lyster on creative non-fiction, @JonSavage1966 on Pulp, @mjohnharrison on Oyamada, @rwilliams1947 on Kind of Blue, @chris_power on HGarner