Nature loves pairs, but pairings aren't always natural. For every pairing that works, like the DNA double helix, there's one that doesn't, like Donald and Ivana Trump.
Certain classical composers are traditionally paired because they dominated a particular style. Haydn and Mozart brought Classicism to its peak, Bruckner and Mahler mastered the gargantuan late Romantic symphony, and Debussy and Ravel created and eventually abandoned musical Impressionism.
Even so, the members of a pair are not interchangeable. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were both Impressionists, but they made individual impressions.
Ravelis occasionally dismissed as a Debussy imitator, because both composers used similar luxuriant and unresolved harmonies,and Debussy established himself in the public consciousness first. But Ravel was his own man. He was always quick to point out that his allegedly Debussyan ``Jeux d'eau'' was published in 1902 - before most of Debussy's significant keyboard works.
Even at his mostImpressionistic, Ravel was never really a Debussy imitator. Ravel's melodies were cleaner, his rhythms more distinct than Debussy's. And his interest in hisBaroque and Classical forebears developed much earlier than Debussy's.
``Jeux d'eau'' cataloged the pianistic innovations that would characterize the later work of both Ravel and Debussy, but - unlike anything by Debussy - it also harked back to the music of Franz Liszt.
In this piece and in Liszt's ``Jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este,'' the play of water in fountains is described in the piano's upper reaches with glittering arpeggios, or chords spread out into their separate notes, harp-style. Ravel also maintained the Lisztian tradition of flashy virtuosity. The Spanish-flavored ``Alborada del gracioso'' movement of the piano suite ``Miroirs' and the knuckle-busting flourishes of ``Gaspard de la nuit'' were far beyond Ravel's ownabilities as a pianist. They challenge even today's best keyboard players.
Despite carrying the Lisztian tradition into the 20th century, Ravel is best known for his works in the gauzy Impressionist style. The most significant of these are the dreamy 1905 piano suite ``Miroirs,'' the fragrant 1907 Introduction and Allegro for chamber ensemble, the lush 1912 ballet ``Daphnis et Chloé,'' the sinister 1920 ``La Valse,'' and the innocently childlike and bittersweet ``Ma mere I'oye'' (``Mother Goose,'' written for piano duet in 1911 and later expanded and orchestrated). In a similar vein isthe lovely but underappreciated ``L'Enfant et les sortileges,'' a brief 1925 opera in which a naughty child's abused Surrounding - torn books, broken teapots, carved trees and tormented animals - come to life and teach the brat a lesson.
Ravel also dallied off and on with Spanish and Gypsy rhythms and melodies. The most famous examples of this sunsplashed style are the orchestral ``Rhapsodie espagnole'' (1908), the short comic opera ``L'Heure espagnole'' (1911), ``Tzigane'' for virtuoso violinist and Piano or orchestra (1924) and the infamous ``BolCro'' (1928).
This last composition repeats a pair of melodies over and over, a littlelouder and with different instruments each time, while the percussion beats out an incessant Spanish rhythm.
``BolCro'' aside, Ravel relied on contrast and variation to propel his music, as had 18th-century French composers like Jean-Philippe Rameau and Francois Couperin.
Most of Ravel's immediate French and German predecessors, on the other hand, preferred more complex thematic evolution and development - think of the turbid lurching heard in Liszt's symphonic poems and César Franck's D-minor symphony.
As Debussy lay dying of cancer toward the end of World War I, Ravel cast off his own Impressionist garb and became a neoclassicist. In 1917 he wrote ``Le Tombeau de Couperin,'' a piano suite (later orchestrated)intended as an homage to Couperin and other 18th-century French composers, as well as to some of Ravel's friends killed in the war.
``Le Tombeau de Couperin'' is a tough suite to pull off, not so much because of technical difficulties but because the pianist must apply a great deal of concentration and intensity to music that should seem calm and unforced to the audience.
Ravel revered the music ofCouperin for its clarity and simplicity. Iiavel's own harmonies from this time on became much simpler and more severe. It's interesting to note that Debussy had been moving in this same direction in his last works.
After the war, Ravel also developed an interest in jazz and blues. This became most obvious in his 1922 Sonata for Violin and Cello, 1927 Sonata for Violin and Piano, and the two jazz-influenced piano concertos of 1931.
Compared to the fragant, sensually indulgent ``Daphnis et Chloc,'' such later music seemed surprisingly austere.
It shouldn't have been such a shock, though, because Ravel's 1905 Sonatine and 1911 ``Valses nobles et sentimentales'' - both for piano - were in a similar stripped-down style, minus the jazz.
The big difference between Ravel's early and late works lies in the old issue of program music. Most of Ravel's compositions up to the war years were inspired by poetry or described a scene - sad birds singing in a black forest, Spaniards throwing a fiesta, the games of a seductive water sprite.
In contrast, most - but not all - of his postwar works alluded to no stories. They conformed to musical rather than poetic structures. Any images they evoked were vague and intentionally abstract.
The middle movement of the Sonata for Violin and Piano is about the blues, which is a style or concept, not an object. Contrast this with the blatantly picturesque middle movement of the much earlier ``Miroirs,'' which is about a ship upon the sea.
Ravel listening suggestions As an introduction to Ravel's orchestral music, a Mercury CD with Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony is hard to beat - spicy late 1950s performances of ``Alborada del gracioso,'' ``La Valse,'' ``Rhapsodie espagnole,'' ``Le Tombeau de Couperin'' and ``Pavane pour une infante dCfunte,'' with Jacques Ibert's musical travelogue ``Escales'' as a bonus.
People freer with their money could choose between two excellent complete sets of Ravel's orchestral works, each occupying four discs: Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra on London, or Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon. Both collections include the piano concertos, and are available on individual discs.
For the piano music, the first choice is the two discs on Nimbus recorded in 1979 by Ravel's associate Vlado Perlemuter. The pianist was quite elderly by this time and could no longer play the toughest pieces with complete security, but overall his performances are so exquisite, so right, that a little sloppiness in ``Alborada'' matters not at all.
The discs are available separately, with the Impressionist works - ``Miroirs,'' ``Gaspard'' and the like - in volume one, and the neoclassical pieces - the Sonatine, ``Le Tombeau de Couperin'' and others - collected in volume two.
Philippe Entremont's two-disc box on CBS is a valid alternative, with a much closer, clearer piano sound.
On CRD, England's Nash Ensemble offers a valuable chamber music collection: the Piano Trio, Introduction and Allegro, and Sonata for Violin and Cello. For the String Quartet, try the Galimir Quartet's recording on Vanguard, coupled with the quartet of Debussy.