Tzigane.

Presenting a revised edition of both versions of Tzigane – Rapsodie de concert represented an enormous challenge. If one consults the orchestral manuscript compiled in July 1924, held at the Morgan Library in New York, the long introductory cadenza — marked Quasi Cadenza by the composer, and occupying practically half the work — is presented as a single bar preceding the orchestra's entrance.

Moreover, comparing the solo part of this autograph document with the first violin and piano edition published by Durand in August 1924 reveals that the composer, when transferring this part into the orchestra two months after its premiere with piano, made several copying errors or altered numerous playing details in terms of harmonics and phrasing — following the first performances in London and Paris in the piano version by Jelly d'Arányi and Samuel Dushkin.

S. Zank had suggested that an inaccessible manuscript of some fifteen pages might be found in the private A. Taverne Collection. But it is through the recent communication of another complete violin and piano manuscript — which also includes the luthéal part, carefully preserved in the Archives du Palais princier de Monaco — that we were able to seriously consider presenting this new edition.

This document, signed by the composer and bearing the dates "April-May 1924" and the mention "Paris Londres," introduces a complete cadenza whose careful study reveals substantial writing modifications, particularly in the initial phrases whose rhythmic patterns, on reading this score, resemble even more those of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Even though we have not identified direct scriptural intervention by the dedicatee on these pages, we know that she advised Ravel on the violinistic writing of this czárdas in the spirit of a Bohemian air, recalling the virtuosic genre pieces that stirred the admiration of music salons at the end of the nineteenth century.

Though it is regrettable that Jelly d'Arányi left no "phonograph" recording of this bravura piece — which would have allowed us to grasp the balance between an "improvised" or ornamented style and a strict, literal reading of the composer's text — the very first piano recordings, including that of Lucien Schwartz — solo violin of the Orchestre Pasdeloup, published in January 1930 for the Gramophone label, who had performed Tzigane in Ravel's presence — guided us in resolving several editorial questions.