Finale of the Ravel Piano Trio

I will rehearse the finale of the Ravel Trio with AW and JP tomorrow afternoon.

Years ago, when I heard this movement for the first time from a recording, I found it disgusting and incomprehensible. I regarded those loud triad chords from the piano as grotesque and unnecessary. I thought, what's the point of pushing the piano to such an extreme? And those trills in the strings - was Ravel thinking of replicating the Devil's Trill?

Of course, I now think very differently. But the finale is still the most elusive of the four movements in the Trio, and to my mind, also the least rich. There are long stretches of music in the movement (e.g., the section starting from the violin's statement of the theme till the point when the piano starts shouting out those chords) in which the piano accompaniment supplies nothing more than a noisy background to a main melody played by the strings (and it's actually pretty challenging to make those many notes sound like noises). Most of the movement is textured as an opposition between a very thick piano part and the strings playing in unison. The coda is essentially the same pattern of chords repeated several times. The entire finale cannot but give one an impression that Ravel was rushing through it -- and yes, he needed to finish it before being enlisted to the French army.

The pentatonic main theme of the movement does have its own special charm. Delicate, playful, and transparent, it almost sounds like a tune produced by a Chinese music box. The opening is actually my favourite spot of the entire movement.