La valse

Ravel’s “La Valse”: Viennese Twilight

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Maurice Ravel’s glittering orchestral tone poem, La valse, is filled with ghosts of an over-waltzed bygone Vienna. Alex Ross describes the haunting work, completed in 1920, in terms of “Old Europe waltzing in the twilight…This is a society spinning out of control, reeling from the horrors of the recent past toward those of the near future.” Originally titled “Wien,” La valse was written in response to a commission from Serge Diaghilev, impresario …

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Remembering Mariss Jansons: Five Great Recordings

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The internationally renowned Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons passed away on Saturday. He was 76. For years, he had dealt with a long-term heart condition. Jansons will be remembered for his tireless energy and personal warmth, his legacy as an orchestra builder, and his powerful interpretations of the music of Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, and Shostakovich, among other composers. He was born in Riga, Latvia amid the German occupation of the Second World War. His …

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Ravel in Triple Meter: “Valses nobles et sentimentales” and “La Valse”

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As a composer, Maurice Ravel was drawn to the waltz. For example, consider the hazy serenity of the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, or (most famously) La valse, the composer’s haunting, dreamlike remembrance of the Viennese waltz, as heard through a perfumed French filter. Around 1920 while writing La valse, Ravel described his fascination with the waltz to the musicologist and writer Jean Marnold: You know my intense attraction to these wonderful rhythms and that I …

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