La valse

The idea for the choreographic poem La valse dates back to 1906. Maurice Ravel, in collaboration with director of Les Ballets russes Serge Diaghilev, set out to compose an apotheosis of the waltz, an homage to Johann Strauss II and the splendour of imperial Vienna, originally to be titled Wien. Other projects—and the outbreak of the First World War, during which Ravel served briefly—delayed the work until 1919. As Europe descended into chaos and ruin, the spirit of celebration gave way to a vision of decline. Ravel now sought to depict the faded decadence of a lost age. When Ravel first played La valse on the piano for Diaghilev, he rejected it, reportedly saying that the work was a “masterpiece” but that it was “not a ballet. It’s a portrait of a ballet!” The piece was first performed in Vienna in October 1920, in a two-piano version by Ravel and his friend Alfredo Casella. The orchestral version premiered two months later in Paris, but it was not staged as a ballet until 1926. 

The work opens mysteriously and builds into a sweeping crescendo in two parts. Ravel includes in the score: “Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees … an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo … An imperial court, about 1855.” The piece ends in what Ravel described as a “fantastic and fatal whirling,” evoking a world that would disappear forever in the wake of war. Blending sensuality with virtuosity, La valse has become one of the most iconic orchestral works of the 20th century, a dazzling testament to Ravel’s genius as a master of sound.  s for piano, an homage to Schubert and the fruit of the “the delicious and forever-new pleasure of a useless occupation” – and to the following year, with his ballet Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs. But it is this Valse, which Roland-Manuel describes as a “vertiginous composition whose whirling intensifies until it imposes the tragic obsession of a race to the abyss,” that remains a masterpiece of unbridled tension from the pen of the composer who, as Roland de Candé declared, “everyone knows may well be the most extraordinary orchestrator of all time.”