Tzigane For Violin And Piano

Maurice Ravel‘s Tzigane for Violin and Piano. Urtext edition full score.

Composed in 1924, there are three versions of this work: with Piano, with Orchestra and with Luthéal, a device forKeyboardinstruments to extend the timbre.

“Virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody” thus reads Ravel’s entry on Tzigane in the so-called ‘Autobiographical Sketch’.Tzigane wasinspired by the Hungarian-English violinist Jelly d’Aranyi, to whom Ravel had already promised a virtuoso piece in 1922 following Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsodies”. Work progressed slowlyand d’Aranyi only received themusic four days before the première but she still gave a brilliant performance.