Ravel's La valse — in 1920 he played this to the man who had commissioned it, and when he finished, the friendship was over. Diaghilev said it was a masterpiece, but not a ballet — a portrait of a ballet. He refused to stage it, and Ravel never dealt with him again. This is Ravel's own piano solo version: seven hundred and fifty-five bars, ten thousand one hundred and forty-four notes, twelve minutes twenty-six, beginning in low fog you can barely hear and ending with the waltz pulling itself apart. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
He finished playing, and nobody in the room spoke
Ravel spent fourteen years thinking about writing a piece about the waltz — as early as 1906 he had mentioned wanting something in homage to Johann Strauss. In between came the First World War: he drove a truck, his mother died, and by the time he came back the Viennese world had gone.
In 1919 Diaghilev commissioned a work for the Ballets Russes, and Ravel took out the idea he had carried for fourteen years and finished it in 1920.
Then came the play-through. He played the whole piece at the piano for Diaghilev — by some accounts four hands with Marcelle Meyer — and when he stopped, Diaghilev said it: "Ravel, it is a masterpiece — but it is not a ballet. It is a portrait of a ballet."
He refused to stage it. Ravel left without a word and they never worked together again; years later they met by chance in Monte Carlo, Diaghilev offered his hand, and Ravel did not take it.
The piece survived on its own, premiered in its orchestral version in December 1920 and now among the most played things he wrote. The ballet waited until 1929, when Ida Rubinstein staged it.
What it is about is written in Ravel's own note at the head of the score: clouds part to reveal couples turning, in an imperial court around 1855. Many read it as an elegy for the Europe the war destroyed, which Ravel rejected — he said it was a dance and nothing more.
Brazil uses it to see a collapse through
Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) uses it — a world pushed out of shape by its own bureaucracy, set to a waltz that goes from splendour to collapse. It is also in Boléro (2024), the Ravel biopic.
It starts in fog and ends in pieces
The opening is almost inaudible: fragments moving in the bass, no tune yet and not really a beat — Ravel's note says the clouds part. It takes a while for the three of the waltz to surface.
Around 2:33 the first complete waltz forms, and they come one after another after that, each more forceful than the last.
From 5:03 comes the middle, where the music briefly returns to the blur of the opening, as if starting over.
After 7:33 it begins to run away. Ravel writes Un peu plus vif et en accélérant here — a little livelier, and accelerating — and from that point tempo and volume go essentially one way.
From 10:03 come the last three minutes. The waltz rhythm breaks, accents land in the wrong places, and the final stretch is the densest in the piece. It does not close; it is dismantled.
This one is in no situation playlist. It gets louder for ten minutes and spends the last two above ff; in the background it will drag you out of whatever you were doing.
Seven hundred and fifty-five bars, for one player's two hands
755 bars, no repeats, in 3/4, with 8 changes of key signature — there is no stable key centre here, and that is the method. 10,144 sounding notes.
The page is unusually crowded with instructions: 635 dynamics, 242 hairpins, 583 pedal spans — 3,638 marks in all, across 10 categories.
It is a piano solo of an orchestral work, made by Ravel himself — the score says Piano solo arranged by the composer. Two staves have to hold a whole orchestra: the rolling bass, the waltz in the middle, the woodwind lines on top, all inside ten fingers.
The range is A0 to F7 — the very bottom of the piano, and this one is already there in the opening fog.
The shortest note lasts 0.039 seconds, barely longer than one frame at 30 fps. In the climax the runs give each note about a single frame; the way to follow it is by the shape of the phrase, not note by note.
This is among the hardest things written for two hands
To be clear: this is not a piece to set as a practice goal. It is a piano reduction of an orchestral score, and in places two hands are physically pushed past comfort — Ravel also made a two-piano version, and most performers take that one.
First, the rolling bass. In the opening the left hand has to produce something audible but not yet formed; too clear destroys it and too vague loses it.
Second, the weight of the waltzes. There are more than a dozen different waltzes here and the accent falls in a different place in each; follow the marks rather than applying one feel for three.
Third, the acceleration. The en accélérant runs all the way to the end with no plateau; settle anywhere and the collapse at the close has nothing to fall from.
Fourth, stamina in the last three minutes, which are the densest and loudest in the piece. The budgeting for that has to start ten minutes earlier.
Fifth, the pedal. Five hundred and eighty-three spans, changing constantly; the difference between muddy and clear here is entirely pedalling.
The tempo is 180 to the quarter. Bar 1 carries only Mouvement de Valse viennoise with no metronome mark, so the figure comes from the conventional Viennese waltz band of fifty-eight to sixty-two bars of 3/4 per minute — ♩ 174 to 186 — taken at the middle. At 180 the recording runs twelve minutes twenty-two, in line with the usual length of the piano solo.
We rate this 5 out of 5.
Ravel's other piano music
This channel already has Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte. His other piano music includes Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Gaspard de la nuit, Le tombeau de Couperin and the Sonatine, none of which has been made yet.
La valse exists in two other forms: the orchestral version, which is the one usually performed, and a version for two pianos. This is the piano solo.
For other orchestral works arranged for solo piano, the channel also has Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4 and Nimrod from the Enigma Variations.
