Ravel: La Valse (Full Score)

In 1906, Maurice Ravel wrote in a letter: "What I am currently working on is not particularly demanding: a great waltz, a kind of homage to the memory of the great Strauß, not Richard, but Johann. You know my lively enthusiasm for these marvellous rhythms [... ]." However the work was still subject to changes until its completion and premiere fourteen years later: Initially intended to be called "Vienna", it was given the new name "La Valse" after the First World War. Although it might have functioned as a ballet, after the rejection by Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Paris Ballets Russes, it was ultimately turned into an orchestral piece.

For his scholarly-critical edition, editor Douglas Woodfull-Harris has drawn on a large number of manuscript and printed sources of all instrumentations and transcriptions of "La Valse". of particular importance is orchestral material from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, which was used for performances conducted by Ravel in 1928.