Maurice Ravel
Valses nobles et sentimentales
1. I. Adélaïde
2. II. Assez lent – avec une expression intense
3. III. Modéré
4. IV. Assez animé
5. V. Presque lent – dans un sentiment intime
6. VI. Vif
7. VII. Moins vif
8. VIII. Épilogue
Le Tombeau de Couperin
9. I. Prélude
10. II. Fugue
11. III. Forlane
12. IV. Rigaudon
13. V. Menuet
14. VI. Toccata
15. À la manière de Chabrier
16. À la manière de Borodine
17. La Valse
18. Prélude
19. Fugue in B-Flat Major
Maurice Ravel ©
By Peter Quantrill
The virtuosity which forms the basis of Gaspard de la nuit from 1908 is refined in Ravel’s later piano music to a markedly clearer kind of writing which crystallizes the harmony and sharpens the profile of the music. The set of Valses nobles et sentimentales was composed in 1911 and comprises eight waltzes for solo piano. Its title refers to two sets composed by Schubert in the 1820s: the Valses nobles D969 and the Valses sentimentales D779.
In his autobiographical sketch from 1928, Ravel expressed his ‘intention of composing a series of waltzes in imitation of Schubert’. According to the pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who studied the set with the composer in 1927, Ravel recommended that the fifth number be played ‘in the spirit of a waltz by Schubert’; the adjective ‘simple’ that the composer wrote into Perlemuter’s score clarifies what Ravel might have understood this ‘spirit’ to be.
What seems more likely is that Ravel was inspired to compose it by the discovery or rediscovery of Liszt’s ‘valses-caprices after Schubert’, the Soirées de Vienne. There are unmistakable echoes of Johann Strauss II in Waltzes 4 and 7, while No.3 seems to look back at Liszt’s Valses oubliées, and No.7 incorporates several aspects of Fauré’s Valses-caprices; all of which would seem to justify Marguerite Long’s claim that the title refers not only to Schubert but ‘without doubt to all others’.
Ravel’s mask of hiding himself in plain sight suited itself to the peculiar circumstances of the premiere, which took place at the Salle Gaveau in May 1911. A printed note explained to the audience: ‘To withdraw from the public the possibility of preconceived ideas, the names of the composers of the works which figure on the programme will be held secret until the day after the concert.’ In the event, none of Ravel’s friends spotted his musical presence, mistaking him instead for Koechlin or Satie.
For an epigraph to the score, Ravel borrowed a quotation from the preface to a contemporary novel by Henri de Régnier in which the author refers to ‘the delicious and ever novel pleasure of a useless occupation’ while drawing parallels which Ravel would readily have responded to between the concern for appearances exhibited by 18th-century aristocratic society, and contemporary preoccupations with the pleasure of aesthetic craft for its own sake (see also Proust). Ravel later orchestrated the Valses nobles, accepted a commission to adapt it for ballet. He did not rewrite the music but he did give it a new title, Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs, as well as a libretto that he wrote himself. It involves a soirée that takes place at a courtesan’s salon in 1820 in Paris, rather than Vienna.
RELEASE DATE: November 2023
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 905
EAN: 5709499905005
