Piano Concerto in G major, M. 83

Ravel worked on the G major concerto between 1929 and 1931, alongside the concerto for the left hand, and intended to play the solo part on tour himself; ill health made that impossible, so Marguerite Long took it, with Ravel conducting, at the Salle Pleyel on 14 January 1932. She kept the dedication. The outer movements draw openly on the jazz he had heard during his American tour of 1928, whip-crack and all. Of the long, unbroken piano melody that begins the Adagio he said he had written it two bars at a time, with Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in front of him. A premiere planned for Amsterdam on 9 March 1931 came to nothing while he was at work on the left-hand concerto; Long received the score only on 11 November 1931 and played it with the Lamoureux Orchestra. In the weeks that followed she and Ravel took the concerto to twenty cities across Europe. He said the first theme had come to him on the train between Oxford and London, and that everything after that initial idea was work with the chisel.