Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 08/28/2007, uploaded on 01/14/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In 1906, Maurice Ravel conceived of a tribute to Johann Strauss II and the grand waltz tradition of Vienna entitled Wien. He was fascinated by the waltz, its rhythms and the “joie de vivre” expressed therein. This conception of a work, however, was set aside during Ravel’s service in World War I, but was taken up again in its aftermath. During this time, the form of the piece changed in part due to a commission from Sergei Diaghilev for a ballet. Giving the work a new title, La Valse, Ravel completed its composition during 1919-20.

With the orchestration already completed, Ravel presented the piece in a two piano version to Diaghilev himself. Relations between the composer and choreographer were already strained after Daphnis et Chloé, and La Valse became the catalyst of their final falling out. After hearing the work, Diaghilev proclaimed the work a masterpiece, yet further remarked that it was no ballet, “but a portrait of a ballet.” Ravel was offended by Diaghilev’s judgment and ended their professional relationship. The animosity between the two men was great and when they met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev’s hand. Insulted, Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel but friends fortunately persuaded him to recant. La Valse, however, was in time staged as a ballet, premiered by the Royal Flemish Opera Ballet in October 1926, and staged again later by the famed George Ballantine in 1951.

Despite its initial failure as a ballet, La Valse nevertheless became a concert favorite. It has also opened the way for much speculation as to the work’s philosophical meaning and Ravel’s intended imagery. In the preface of the score, he gave the following image: "Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees at letter A an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo letter B. Set in an imperial court, about 1855." Despite this scene, one of such ethereal beauty and grandeur, some have attempted to find it a symbol of the decay and destruction of Europe in the aftermath of the Great War. Ravel himself denied this claim, stating “It doesn't have anything to do with the present situation in Vienna, and it also doesn't have any symbolic meaning in that regard. In the course of La Valse, I did not envision a dance of death or a struggle between life and death. (The year of the choreographic argument, 1855, repudiates such an assumption.)"       Joseph DuBose

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La Valse          Maurice Ravel

Though sketches for material used in La Valse go back as far as 1906, the work was composed only in 1919-20. Ravel and Alfredo Casella played the two-piano version in Vienna in November 1920 at a concert of Arnold Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances. The piece that became La Valse was to have been a waltz portrait of unalloyed affection. As early as 1906, Ravel planned a tribute to Johann Strauss to be called Wien. For many reasons he kept getting distracted from the project, and the experience of the 1914-18 war made it impossible for him to retrieve the spirit of the original idea. When, late in 1919, he began work on the score, the world had become a different place. Waltzing Vienna was no longer to be seen in quite the same way, and so La Valse became a bitter and ferocious fantasy, a terrifying tone poem that helped define a new language of musical nightmare.

Ravel completed La Valse on commission from Diaghilev. But when Ravel played it for him, the impresario saw no dance possibilities in it. Still, Ravel published the score as a poème chorégraphique, and there is a prefatory note with a hint of a scenario: "Swirling clouds afford glimpses, through rifts, of waltzing couples. The clouds scatter little by little; one can distinguish an immense hall with a whirling crowd. The scene grows progressively brighter. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo. An imperial court, about 1855."   Ravel indicates specific musical cues for the scattering of the clouds (the slow tune in thirds) and for the full lighting of the chandeliers. La Valse first made its mark as a concert piece, but a number of choreographers have found it inspiring, including Balanchine, who in 1951 used Valses nobles et sentimentales and La Valse as a sequence.    Alessio Bax

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.