La Valse

Program notes

About the Work

The idea for ‘La Valse’ was older than the piece by more than a decade. From about 1906 Maurice Ravel had in mind an orchestral work in honour of the Viennese waltz and of Johann Strauss, which he called ‘Wien’ (Vienna). Nothing came of it before the First World War, in which Ravel served in the French army. He came back to the plan afterwards, when Serge Diaghilev asked him for a score for the Ballets Russes, and he wrote the piece between early 1919 and 1920 under a new title: ‘La Valse, poème chorégraphique’.

Diaghilev turned it down. When Ravel played it through to him on two pianos, the impresario is reported to have called it a masterpiece but not a ballet: the portrait of a ballet. Ravel took offence, and the two never worked together again. The first performance was therefore a concert one, in Paris on 12 December 1920, with the Lamoureux Orchestra conducted by Camille Chevillard. Stage productions followed later in the decade, in Antwerp in 1926 and by Ida Rubinstein’s company in 1928.

Ravel printed a short scenario at the head of the score. Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples can be glimpsed. The clouds scatter to reveal an immense hall filled with a turning crowd; the scene grows lighter, and the chandeliers blaze out at the first fortissimo. The setting is an imperial court, about 1855.

What the scenario does not mention is how the piece ends, and that has occupied listeners ever since. The waltz gathers speed and weight until it tears itself apart. Coming so soon after 1918, this has often been heard as a picture of the old Europe dancing towards its own ruin, and the orchestra’s own note takes that line: every waltz, it says, may be the last. Ravel himself is reported to have resisted the idea, saying that one should see in the piece only what the music expresses, a rising progression of sound. Both things can be true of the same twelve minutes.

What to Listen For

The beginning is the clouds. Double basses rumble very quietly, and fragments of waltz rhythm and melody drift past without settling. A first tune takes shape low in the bassoons and violas. The harps sweep the mist aside, and the violins lead the orchestra into the main waltz in full light.

A chain of waltzes follows, as in a set by Johann Strauss, each with its own character and each scored differently: some mild and a little shy, with oboe, violins and flutes to the fore, others loud and sweeping. Ravel’s orchestra is large, with two harps and a good deal of percussion, and much of the pleasure is in the detail.

Taken as a whole, the piece is one long crescendo, interrupted and begun again. Each time the dance regathers it is louder and less polite than before, and the elegance of the early waltzes gives way to something closer to violence. The final climax is hard to resist and hard to hear as a mere ballroom scene, which is where the arguments about what Ravel meant begin.