The great Vlado Perlemuter (1904-2002), pupil of Maurice Ravel, performing Ravelâs piano concerto for the left hand with the ORTF Philharmonic under the baton of Jacques Beaudry. His gorgeous tone in the cadenza is mesmerizing; his art has been described best by his professor Alfred Cortot: âHe is of the ilk of Dinu Lipatti and Clara Haskil⊠the masterpieces of our art could not be served by better hands or more noble and comprehensive spirit.â
Perlemuter met Ravel in 1927, so five years before the concerto for the left hand came to fruition at the behest of Paul Wittgenstein (the brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) who commissioned it, having lost his right arm during WW1. To prepare this task Ravel studied Franz Liztâs second piano concerto for the dark character (left-hand heavy), the lyricism and the cyclic form as well as left-hand works: Czernyâs Opp. 399 & 718, Alkanâs Op. 76, No. 1, Saint-SaĂ«nsâ Op. 135, Scriabinâs Op. 9 and the Chopin-Godowsky Ătudes. After hearing Ravelâs Jeux dâeau for the first time, Perlemuter completely fell in love with Ravelâs music and decided to learn his whole output. He then reached out to the composer to work directly with him and have precious insights into his music⊠Ravel accepted, happy that a young pianist was interested in his music â just like Robert Casadesus. They became very close and as a result Perlemuter became the first pianist to play the entire repertoire of Ravel in two recitals in 1929. Perlemuter said that Ravel thought that pianists put too much pedal and did not make the piano sing enough⊠You can deep dive into the insights of Ravel as presented on Perlemuterâs annotated edition of his complete works published by Ongaku No Tomo Edition.
