Maurice Ravel’s La valse was premiered by the Royal Flemish Opera Ballet in 1926. It had been composed for the Ballets Russes, but Sergei Diaghilev turned it down, calling it a “masterpiece, but not a ballet,” rather “the portrait of a ballet … the painting of a ballet.” He might have found his judgment confirmed in the figural embellishments Ravel added to this piano arrangement of the orchestral work. The composer himself declared the work “a choreographic poem … a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz … the mad whirl of some fantastic and fateful carousel.”
Maurice Ravel (French, 1875–1937), La valse, arranged for piano, autograph manuscript, 1920. Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, 1983. Robert Owen Lehman, former owner.