# The Listeners' Club: Ravel's Bolero



## timothyjuddviolin (Nov 1, 2011)

Here is a great video of Muti and Vienna playing Bolero. Muti chooses to take the slower tempo that Ravel intended and I think when you hear it you'll agree that its the right tempo:

http://www.timothyjuddviolin.com/2012/08/04/the-listeners-club-ravels-bolero/


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

http://www.classicfm.com/composers/ravel/guides/story-maurice-ravels-bolero/ a story behind Bolero. I didn´t know that a woman said :"madman, madman!" 

But interesting story and the fact that from structure and development point of view it's really the most simplistic work by Ravel....


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It's been many decades since I read Henry Miller's _Tropic of Cancer_, but, as I recall, somewhere within its pages Miller remarks that "Ravel could have driven us all mad" with Boléro. It may be that Miller attended that first performance also, and was struck by the woman's reaction, finding his own quite similar.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

timothyjuddviolin said:


> Here is a great video of Muti and Vienna playing Bolero. Muti chooses to take the slower tempo that Ravel intended and I think when you hear it you'll agree that its the right tempo:
> 
> http://www.timothyjuddviolin.com/2012/08/04/the-listeners-club-ravels-bolero/


His recording with the Philadelphia orchestra = 17.09 minutes


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

The Proms featured Gergiev (complete with matchstick baton) and the Munich boys and girls in a fine Bolero.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Nereffid, could you possibly find your A la carte poll with _Bolero_? I'm interested in seeing the results.

:tiphat:


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

I have it by Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. Wonderful recording!!


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

yeah, that Bolero is quite a thing, I mean that even people who are indifferent to CM seem to like Bolero very much. It resonates with them. At the same time they might not like even Verdi who is easy to get for CM beginners, yet at the same time Chopin's melancholy can touch them deeper than Brahms or Schubert , in Brahms case it's obvious, for his melancholy is less obvious and covered and intertwined with philosophy.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

timothyjuddviolin said:


> Here is a great video of Muti and Vienna playing Bolero. Muti chooses to take the slower tempo that Ravel intended and I think when you hear it you'll agree that its the right tempo:
> 
> http://www.timothyjuddviolin.com/2012/08/04/the-listeners-club-ravels-bolero/


Of course, you don't have to take Muti's word for it:


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

helenora said:


> yeah, that Bolero is quite a thing, I mean that even people who are indifferent to CM seem to like Bolero very much. It resonates with them. At the same time they might not like even Verdi who is easy to get for CM beginners, yet at the same time Chopin's melancholy can touch them deeper than Brahms or Schubert , in Brahms case it's obvious, for his melancholy is less obvious and covered and intertwined with philosophy.


It's all the Kaiser's fault. He started WWI, so we had to start calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and stop liking German music and now we only like classical music when it sounds kind of like the music we steal from black people.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Magnum Miserium said:


> It's all the Kaiser's fault. He started WWI, so we had to start calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and stop liking German music and now we only like classical music when it sounds kind of like the music we steal from black people.


it makes sense. really...even thinking about French music , it´s definitely lighter ( in a sense of being less charged substantially) compared to German music....especially taken into consideration 19th century, but well, 19th century is way too romantic in any music. But of course there are exceptions ...


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

DiesIraeCX said:


> Nereffid, could you possibly find your A la carte poll with _Bolero_? I'm interested in seeing the results.
> 
> :tiphat:


The most recent data I have put it at no.417 of 2638 on the Leaderboard, with 29 likes out of 55 voters.

Works with similar (weighted) scores:
Shostakovich: String quartet no.11 in F minor, op.122
Beethoven: Piano sonata no.20 in G, op.49 no.2
Haydn: Symphony no.097 in C
Ravel: Miroirs
Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, op. 34
Schubert: Piano trio no.1 in B flat, D. 898
Bartók: Rhapsody no.1 for violin and orchestra, Sz.87
Brahms: Piano quartet no.3 in C minor, op.60
Chopin: Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, op.66
Elgar: Symphony no.2 in E flat, op.63

(Note: I list these works just for reference and a little perspective; too close a reading is a bad idea)

In terms of Ravel's oeuvre, its popularity puts it in the middle. The most popular Ravel works - _La Valse_, _Pavane pour une infante défunte_, and the string quartet -are much more popular than _Bolero_.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> we had to start calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"


It might have changed its name but I think it was still obvious what it was.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

without Bolero it would still be the dark ages of house cleaning.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

While I very much enjoy Boléro when I encounter it, I find it has a faint odor of the Falange about it--its relentless expansion of the orchestra summons up for me a vision of Franco's Falangists or the Long Live Death foreign legionnaires of Millán-Astray, slow-marching irresistably down some wide, sun drenched, otherwise-empty boulevard, silent, except for the obsessive music. Ravel may not have had anything like this in mind, but _La Valse_ also conjures up strange and feverish images, this time intentionally. For such a quiet, reserved, inscrutable man, Maurice Ravel may have had an intense inner life: "Down in the basement, I hear the sound of machines."


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> While I very much enjoy Boléro when I encounter it, I find it has a faint odor of the Falange about it--its relentless expansion of the orchestra summons up for me a vision of Franco's Falangists or the Long Live Death foreign legionnaires of Millán-Astray, slow-marching irresistably down some wide, sun drenched, otherwise-empty boulevard, silent, except for the obsessive music. Ravel may not have had anything like this in mind, but _La Valse_ also conjures up strange and feverish images, this time intentionally. For such a quiet, reserved, inscrutable man, Maurice Ravel may have had an intense inner life: "Down in the basement, I hear the sound of machines."


true....that's why at one of the rehearsals Celibidache compared its development with running amok.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

In his 1960 recording of Bolero for Westminster, Hermann Scherchen replaces the snare drum with what sounds like a tom-tom. A critic at the time commented on it; I vaguely recall Scherchen asserting it was the sound Ravel intended.

Morton Gould employs two snare drums-- one in each channel-- in his 1959 Bolero recording for RCA. The LP is billed as a "Stereo Spectacular", suggesting an extra-musical reasoning.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Why is mine the last post in so many threads? On another website there were something like 75 lively posts. I posted information that I thought was interesting and innocuous (like above) and the thread died instantly. I' m not trying to be the final word or a thread killer-- I just want to participate.

It's demoralizing.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

geralmar said:


> Why is mine the last post in so many threads? On another website there were something like 75 lively posts. I posted information that I thought was interesting and innocuous (like above) and the thread died instantly. I' m not trying to be the final word or a thread killer-- I just want to participate.
> 
> It's demoralizing.


And I thought it was just me that had the 'kiss of death' when it comes to halting threads.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

techniquest said:


> And I thought it was just me that had the 'kiss of death' when it comes to halting threads.


I've stopped my share of threads dead in their tracks also.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> While I very much enjoy Boléro when I encounter it, I find it has a faint odor of the Falange about it--its relentless expansion of the orchestra summons up for me a vision of Franco's Falangists or the Long Live Death foreign legionnaires of Millán-Astray, slow-marching irresistably down some wide, sun drenched, otherwise-empty boulevard, silent, except for the obsessive music. Ravel may not have had anything like this in mind, but _La Valse_ also conjures up strange and feverish images, this time intentionally.


Well, sure. But then, nice, comfortable music like, I don't know, Mendelssohn's "Spinning Song" or whatever, is the sound of the bourgeoisie relaxing at home after a hard day of crushing trade unionists and starving colonized peoples. And modern pop music is the sound of neoliberal capitalism. Basically, all music is evil.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I believe Frodo lives!


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