Ravel, "La Valse", the apotheosis of waltz

French composer Maurice Ravel was not very tall. He was only six feet six. For this reason, when World War I broke out, he thought he could make his contribution in defence of the homeland from the incipient branch of aviation, because his short stature, in turn, implied a little weight. However, all his attempts to be enrolled as an aviator were in vain, and he was eventually dispatched to the Verdun front as an ambulance driver.

During the war, six of his friends fell in combat. His mother also died, in 1917. At the end of the war, Ravel was devastated, an insistent discouragement besieged him and the beginning of a creative block seemed to be prevailing.
But in 1919, Russian music critic and ballet entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev brought him back to creative work by commissioning him to write a ballet to be staged by the school of dancers and choreographers Diaghilev had created ten years ago, the Russian Ballets company.

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

Maurice was attracted by the project. Since 1906, the idea of ​​an orchestrated piece paying homage to the "waltz" form and by the way to Johann Strauss Jr., has long been in his mind. Ravel had in high esteem the greatest exponent of this dance in the past century. Even the idea already had a title, "Vienna". So, it was enough for Maurice to rethink the concept, working with the available material in a new way.

The result was the 13-minute choreographic poem La Valse, which was brought forward to Diaghilev in 1920. The Russian guy did not agree and rejected it. He later commented among his acquaintances that this was not a ballet but a painting of a ballet.

Ravel, who was a celebrity in Europe at that point, was not amused by the comment, and the relationship between the two artists was broken forever. La Valse, then, had to be presented as a concert piece, with its premiere in December 1920. It was only six years later that it made its choreographic premiere, in Antwerp, in October 1926.

Ravel made a version for two pianos a few years later, but it is the concert piece version the one that is currently most frequently performed on world stages. It is the one we now hear, in a rendition by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the South Korean conductor and pianist Myung-Whun Chung.

Although they have an undeniable presence, it is not easy to discover in this piece from the first half of the 20th century, moments that make us evoke Strauss' waltzes and salons from 1850. Likewise, listening to it is not recommended to fall asleep.

Its genesis, just after the war, has given rise to the most diverse and apocalyptic impressions among scholars. That the piece breathes a smell of the end of civilization, a smell of death. Or that its design in one movement graphs the birth, fall, and destruction of a musical form: the waltz.

Filled with great vigour, majesty, compulsion, frenzy, chaos, and in the midst of all this, some melancholy too, the piece is indeed a waltz ... but only to the penultimate measure. With the last one, a binary compass, the work seems to achieve the purpose for which it seemed intended: total dislocation.

For its author, however, everything is simpler. It should only be seen in it – Ravel said – what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sound, to which the stage adds light and movement.

A. Marcello: Oboe Concerto - Adagio

An absolute contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi, the Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello (1673 - 1747) stood out in life, more than because of his music, because of his professional career and social activity as a member of the Venetian nobility. He and his brother Benedetto, both sons of a senator, were two great dilettantes of the time who, given their comfortable social position, were able to indulge in the study of the most diverse disciplines, with a lust for life.

Once finished his law studies, Alessandro also dabbled in poetry, philosophy, mathematics and music. Benedetto was also a musician and until the mid-twentieth century, much of their work was attributed only to him, perhaps because Alessandro came up with a bad idea, ​​publishing his works with a pseudonym, with which he was known in the art circle where he would participate, the famous Pontificia Accademia degli Arcadi.

Oboe Concerto - Adagio
The complete work of Alessandro Marcello is reduced. Just over a dozen cantatas, sonatas for violin and concertos are counted. His best-known work is the Oboe Concerto for Oboe, Strings and continuo which, thanks to the transcription of JS Bach for keyboard, obtained acceptable dissemination for the time, although it later generated reasonable doubts about its authorship. The romantic love story addressed by the 1970 film Anonimo Veneziano finally brought it closer to our days, by incorporating the second movement of the concerto, the adagio, into its soundtrack.

Mendelssohn: Rondó Capriccioso op 14

German musician Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had it all in his short life. The son of banker parents, after some squeamishness his father accompanied him in the idea of ​​becoming a professional musician. Félix accomplished his goal rapidly: at 17 he had already composed the overture for the Shakespearean drama Dream of a Summer Night and at 23 was known in all major European capitals as a concert pianist, conductor and composer. Later, he would happily marry (for only eleven years, sadly) the most beautiful, cultured, and pious girl in Frankfurt.

At Goethe's
So that in his early times everything was going great for Felix. His teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, a friend of the poet Goethe and somehow his assistant in the art of music, introduced him to the bard's house in 1821. Felix was twelve years old and Zelter was one having a long history vetoing musicians who used to send to the poet his poems musicalized requesting his permission and moral support.

But this was not the case with Mendelssohn. The bard was delighted with that bright and young guest. In November of that year, little Felix wrote to his parents: "I make more music here than at home. Every day after dinner, Goethe opens the piano and says to me: I still haven't heard you today, make a little noise for me".

Notwithstanding the age difference, Mendelssohn's relationship with Goethe will last until his death in 1832. Meanwhile, Félix is ​​going to set several of his poems to music, something that neither Schubert, Beethoven nor Berlioz were able to do. In addition to relentless, the assistant Zelter did not have a good eye.

Rondo Capriccioso, opus 14
The Rondó Capriccio is a piano work composed around 1827 (that is, at eighteen). The work has been highly praised for its beautiful romantic pieces although it seems to be built on brilliance, for the performer's brilliance. The vigorous octaves at the end are proof of this and that is why today it is performed almost exclusively in piano competitions, to gauge the performer's virtuosity.

Therefore, it is quite a novelty to come upon this rendition by the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, very young, in a television or radio studio, probably in the United States. We have no further information on the recording. One can only imagine a few things: that Arrau will be about thirty-five years old; that the recording may have been damaged and some cuts were made. Still, it is absolutely worth it. It is shocking to see the serenity of Arrau at the end of the piece. Unlike some of his colleagues, there is no indication in him that his performance has involved a superhuman effort that transported him to an ethereal world from which he must painfully return to the physical world that we all share.