Composed at a difficult time, and not clearly belonging to any one genre: nevertheless, Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse” is now firmly established in the symphonic repertoire. The Bärenreiter edition sets a new standard.

With his “Poème chorégraphique” La Valse, Maurice Ravel was caught in the middle twice over. The work was to have been entitled “Wien” (Vienna) when he first started composing his homage to the highly popular waltz king Johann Strauss. But at the outbreak of the First World War, that title, associated with the enemy, no longer seemed justifiable, and so the work lay incomplete. In 1919 Ravel resumed work on the piece and found a new, innocuous title: “it will now be called ‘La Valse’ ”, he wrote to the director of the Paris Opéra, probably already with the idea of a performance by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the back of his mind. But Diaghilev responded to the piece with the oft-quoted rejection which irrevocably sealed the fate of La Valse: “Ravel, it’s a masterpiece, but it’s not a ballet. It’s the portrait of a ballet, the painting of a ballet.” So the doors of the Opéra (initially) remained closed to the work, and instead, it began to find success in concert halls: the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux under Camille Chevillard inaugurated its brilliant progress on 12 December 1920 in the Salle Gaveau in Paris, and just three years later the Neue Wiener Journal was able to write of Ravel’s now “world-famous ‘Valse’ ”. But a certain ambiguity remained because, although Terpsichore had received a pretty gift, “La Valse” remained confined to the repertoire of concert societies.

Two factors may have contributed to this state of affairs: firstly, after Diaghilev’s rejection, Ravel had it in mind that the right to the first production must definitely go to the Vienna Opera, “the city of the Romantic waltz” – but plans regarding this were soon dashed. Secondly, Diaghilev had unerringly exposed the structural idiosyncracies of the work, as already shown in the programme note preceding the score: “Through swirling mist, occasional glimpses of dancing couples can be seen. The swathes of cloud dissipate, revealing a vast hall filled with a whirling crowd. The scene gradually grows brighter. The chandeliers shine forth. An imperial court, around 1855.” By only outlining a stage instruction, but foregoing a plot, “La Valse” lacks a plot which can be portrayed; the “choreographic poem” becomes a symphonic poem.

But what is “La Valse” about? The wide range of interpretative approaches from the very beginning surprised even Ravel, who countered all attempts at interpretation in an interview with his original idea: “Some saw in my waltz the expression of a tragic event; others said it represented the end of the Second Empire; others yet again thought it was post-war Vienna. This is all mistaken. Of course the waltz is tragic, but in the Greek sense: it is a fateful swirling, it is an expression of the dizziness and sensuality of dancing driven to ecstasy.” Admittedly, the references to Strauss waltzes which Viennese audiences detected with great relish in performances in the early 1920s are unmistakable: Ravel’s play with the harmonic turns, rhythmic patterns and melodic formulae of the original Viennese picture continue to fascinate to this day, and so “La Valse” made its way in the musical world – even if it turned out differently than Ravel intended!

For the new Bärenreiter edition Douglas Woodfull-Harris has consulted all the available sources, including the different piano versions. The primary source used was a corrected first edition published by Durand (Lucien Garban Collection, Walter W. Stiern Library, California State University, Bakersfield). For the first time, variant readings and durations from the performance material of the San Francisco Symphony were taken into consideration; these were used on 3 February 1928 when Ravel conducted the work there.

Gudula Schütz
(from [t]akte 1/2026)
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)