La Valse

Louis XV’s court composer Jean-Philippe Rameau filled his opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes with graceful melodies and dance rhythms energised by drums, bells, and tambourines. Eighteenth-century Paris audiences couldn’t get enough of its drama, harmonic complexity, and orchestral colour.

Centuries later, Ravel was never far from the idea of dance in his bluesy Piano Concerto in G major, which blended classical refinement with constantly changing kinetic energy, especially in its mischievous third movement. It’s a chance for Wellington audiences to enjoy the precocious brilliance of young Auckland soloist Shan Liu as the piano ripples under a merrily tripping piccolo solo, or swoops over the orchestra’s strutting march.

Less familiar is Paul Dukas Poéme dansé La Péri. Written for the dance impresario Diaghilev, its best-known feature is the opening brass fanfare. But it would be a shame to miss the bewitching Peri’s dance that follows, praised in a 1921 Paris Opera review for its “orientalist and venomously sensual theme.”

Maurice Ravel’s prefaced his score to his “poème chorégraphique”, La Valse, with a this description imagining an imperial court of the 1850s: “Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees … an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo.”

Intended as a tribute to Johann Strauss II, La Valse blends Strauss’ giddy delight with a fin de siècle sense of a world of careless privilege whirling out of control.