Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major: An Homage to American Jazz
With its sultry, bluesy second movement, Maurice Ravel’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano in G Major, M. 77 is an homage to American jazz. It was Ravel’s final chamber work. He completed it in 1927, shortly before the trip to America where he met George Gershwin. By the early 1920s, the jazzy strains of Harlem, New Orleans, and W.C. Handy’s St Louis blues had found their way into Parisian cafés. …