RAVEL – Bolero Fragment – THREE CELLOS OR LARGER CELLO ENSEMBLE

Other Identification:
Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel’s most famous musical composition. Boléro epitomizes Ravel’s preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying “Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality? I’m going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can”.
The composition was a sensational success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 22nd November 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs and scenario by Alexandre Benois. The orchestra of the Opéra was conducted by Walther Straram.
Boléro became Ravel’s most famous composition much to the surprise of the composer, who had predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play it. It is nowadays played as a purely orchestral work, only very rarely being staged as a ballet. According to a possibly apocryphal story from the premiere performance, a woman was heard shouting that Ravel was mad – when told about this, Ravel is said to have remarked that she had understood the piece! The piece gained new attention after it was prominently featured in the 1979 romantic comedy “10”, co-starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek. This resulted in massive sales, generating an estimated $1 million in royalties and briefly made Ravel the best-selling classical composer some 40 years after his death. The ice dancing pair ‘Torvill and Dean’ danced to a six-minute version of the work in winning the gold medal in ice dancing at the 1984 Winter Olympics, receiving perfect 6.0s for artistic merit. This piece’s copyright expired on 1st May 2016 for many countries, but not worldwide; however it is now public domain in the European Union.