Paris booed Ravel's most radical masterpiece (La Valse, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales)

How Ravel’s Valses reflected the turmoil in his world – both inside and out.
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Hosted, written, and edited by Robert Fleitz – @RobertFleitz   / rfleitz  

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Gwendolyn Mok https://www.gwendolynmok.com/
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also featuring Gwendolyn's recordings of Ravel's piano works.

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In pre-war Paris, a concert devoted to adventurous new music took an unexpected and scandalous turn. Maurice Ravel premiered his "Valses nobles et sentimentales", and the reaction was immediate and brutal. There were catcalls. There were boos. The audience hated the piece so much that, when asked to guess who had written it, they attributed it to almost anyone except Ravel. They simply couldn’t believe this elegant, refined composer had created something so sharp, unstable, and unsettling.

And yet, from that night on, "Valses nobles et sentimentales" became one of Ravel’s most personal works.

In this video, pianist Robert Fleitz sits down with internationally renowned Ravel grand-student Gwendolyn Mok to unpack why this piece shocked its first listeners — and why, 150 years after Ravel’s birth, it remains one of the most misunderstood and underperformed works in his piano output.

Rather than a charming set of salon dances, these waltzes reveal Ravel at a crossroads. Deeply influenced by Schubert and Schumann, obsessed with dance and structure, and increasingly willing to fracture elegance from within, Ravel uses the waltz as a psychological and historical pressure point. The noble and the sentimental are constantly colliding, switching masks, and dissolving into something darker.

This piece also foreshadows one of the most terrifying works of the 20th century: La Valse. As Ravel’s life was transformed by World War I — including his service driving supply trucks at the front — the nostalgic waltz tradition would later be torn apart completely.

Along the way, we explore Ravel’s complicated identity as a Swiss-born, Basque-speaking composer who nonetheless fought for France, his lifelong obsession with dance and choreography, and why his music so often resists easy emotional categories. In this anniversary year marking 150 years since Maurice Ravel’s birth this video asks why his music still unsettles us — and why that discomfort may be exactly the point.

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⌛CHAPTERS⌛
0:00 Ravel booed off the stage
0:23 The unmasked composer twist
0:54 Who had written this AWFUL piece?!
1:15 The piece which became Ravel’s baby
1:36 Ravel’s adventurousness and Miroirs
2:12 The shocking opening chords
2:30 “he tortured me for this piece”
3:00 Introducing Gwendolyn Mok
3:48 learn more about Ravel on tonebase Premium!
4:04 Ravel’s obsession with dance
4:27 Unexpected dances in Ravel’s piano works
5:08 Franz Schubert’s inspiration
6:02 Waltz No. 5 and the relationship to Schubert tribute
6:45 Ravel and Schumann
7:24 You can't die away enough…
8:01 the emotional difficulty of the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales
8:36 Ravel’s orchestration of the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales
9:26 A valse in the shadow of World War I
10:28 How La Valse tears nostalgia apart
11:05 The horror of the imperial ballroom
11:37 Ravel and Diaghilev’s duel
12:15 La Valse and Valses Nobles et Sentimentales sibling relationships
13:00 Opposite endings - crazy fast and crazy slow
13:30 The parallel to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and Left Hand Concerto
13:50 Ravel’s overlooked Basque identity
14:30 The Ravel swimsuit issue
15:00 The importance of language
15:27 Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and harmonic tension
15:48 Ravel between worlds
16:09 Ravel’s 150th year
16:48 “sprinkle me over Ravel’s grave”
17:10 How to play Ravel, in Gwendolyn’s words
18:25 learn more on tonebase Premium!
19:24 a formal apology

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