About the work
La Valse is a “poème chorégraphique pour orchestre” by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1906 and 1920. Sergei Diaghilev had commissioned a ballet on the theme of Vienna and its waltzes from Ravel in 1919, but rejected the finished score as “not a ballet, but the portrait of a ballet.” The work received its concert premiere in Paris on 12 December 1920, and was first staged as a ballet in Antwerp in 1926, followed by further choreographies, including one by Bronislava Nijinska for Ida Rubinstein in 1928.
Plot
Ravel's own programme note describes swirling clouds out of which waltzing couples emerge, opening onto an imperial ballroom filled with a whirling crowd around the year 1855. The initially glittering waltz grows steadily more distorted in rhythm and dissonant in harmony, building to a violent, chaotic climax.
Cultural significance
Diaghilev's rejection led to a lasting rift between Ravel and the impresario; when the two met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake his hand, and Diaghilev reportedly challenged him to a duel. Despite the falling-out, La Valse became a frequently choreographed work, staged among others by George Balanchine (1951) and Frederick Ashton (1958), and today belongs to both the concert and the ballet repertoire.