Valse Fantaisie - Glinka
Valse triste - Sibelius
Waltz Suite, Op 110 (excs) - Prokofiev
La valse - Ravel
The waltz began in the early 19th century as a ballroom dance - an indecent one, by conservative standards. By the 1920s it had become a symbol of nostalgia and, largely because of its associations with Vienna and Paris, of decadence. Yesterday's lunchtime orchestral concert explored that journey.
The NSO and conductor Alexander Anissimov began with the waltz as concert music. Glinka's Valse Fantaisie was composed for piano in 1839 and orchestrated in 1856. The NSO's measured, steadily-moving playing was impeccably judged.
Sibelius's Valse triste - originally a piece of theatre music - exploits the waltz's seductive reputation. Death could dance nothing else. But could even he have danced to this odd performance? The beginning was extraordinarily slow, as if everything as far as the woodwind entry was an introduction. Then the slow speed returned until the concluding section. Colour and control were admirable, but the piece was shapeless.
The sturdy playing of two excerpts from Prokofiev's Waltz Suite, Op. 110, was much more compelling. The first one, "Since We Met" from the opera War and Peace, is a damp squib; the second, "Happiness" from Cinderella, epitomises the waltz as evocative ballet music.
Ravel's La valse is a 15minute, virtuoso melange of waltz tunes. Originally conceived as a ballet, it is an evocation of things which, by the time of composition in 1920, had passed away. The performance was highly dramatised, less concerned with the details of Ravel's brilliant orchestration than with the general effect of swirling rhythm and opulent sound. Its rhythmic animation was a telling reminder of the music's origins.
