The concerto was Ravel's penultimate composition. He had contemplated a piano concerto, based on
Basque themes, in 1906; he returned to the idea in 1913, but abandoned work on the piece in 1914. Fifteen years elapsed before he turned once more to the idea of writing a concerto. He began sketching it in 1929 but throughout his career he had been a slow, painstaking worker, and it was nearly three years before the concerto was finished. He was obliged to put it to one side while he worked to a deadline to write another concerto, the
D major, for the left hand, commissioned by
Paul Wittgenstein. The biographer
Arbie Orenstein writes that while touring the US in 1928, Ravel had been "impressed by its
jazz,
Negro spirituals and the excellence of its orchestras". Jazz had been popular in Paris since the start of the decade: Ravel had first heard, and enjoyed, it in 1921, and its influence is heard in the
violin sonata, completed in 1927, and in the D major piano concerto. The Basque theme mooted in 1906 and 1913 was not wholly abandoned. His colleague
Gustave Samazeuilh believed that Ravel drew on his earlier ideas for the outer movements of the G major concerto, and Orenstein notes a Basque influence in the opening theme of the work. In an interview with the music critic Pierre Leroi, published in October 1931, Ravel said: He had intended to be the soloist in the first public performance of the new work, but fatigue, poor health and pressure of work led him to offer the premiere to
Marguerite Long, to whom he dedicated the concerto. Long, who was known for her performances of the works of
Fauré and
Debussy had earlier asked Ravel for a new work. She received the completed score on 11 November 1931, and played the concerto at the
Salle Pleyel on 14 January 1932, with Ravel conducting the
Orchestre Lamoureux. The first North American performances were given on 22 April 1932, in
Boston and
Philadelphia. ==Instrumentation==