Introduction and Allegro (Ravel)

Harpists who have featured in recordings include Lily Laskine, Nicanor Zabaleta, Osian Ellis, Markus Klinko, Lavinia Meijer and Marie-Pierre Langlamet.

[1] The rival Érard company responded by commissioning Maurice Ravel to write a piece to display the expressive range of its double-action pedal harp.

[2][n 1] Ravel completed his Introduction and Allegro for a septet of harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet in June 1905, dedicating it to Albert Blondel, director of Maison Érard.

[2] For Ravel, composition was generally slow and painstaking,[5] but he wrote the Introduction and Allegro at what for him was breakneck speed, to complete it before embarking on a boating holiday with friends.

[n 2] The players were Micheline Kahn (harp), Philippe Gaubert (flute), Ernest Pichard (clarinet), and the Quartet Firmin Touche; the performance was conducted by Charles Domergue.

The principal melody is given in variation form in the harp, accompanied by pizzicato strings, leading to an animated and fortissimo conclusion.

Comparing Debussy's 1904 Danses sacrée et profane with Ravel's piece commissioned in response, the critic Mark de Voto comments that the former are "restrained and even austere, but no less sensuous in their subtlety, without so much as a hint of the harp’s most characteristic gesture, the glissando", whereas Ravel's is "a brilliant virtuoso piece" with "a lushness of colour" and "a remarkably full instrumental sound".

[36] In his 2012 Ravel the Decadent, Michael Puri interprets the Introduction and Allegro as "a scene of reanimation"[37] – in the words of another analyst, Jessie Fillerup, "a dawn that heralds renewal while pointing toward the inevitable dusk".

[39] The composer directed an early recording of the work in London in 1923, with an ensemble comprising Gwendolen Mason, harp; Robert Murchie, flute; Haydn Draper, clarinet; and a string quartet led by George Woodhouse.