Vikingur plays Ravel Piano Concerto

Vikingur plays Ravel Piano Concerto

Grieghallen

Igor Stravinsky was improvising at the piano one day in 1911 when he had the idea for a new ballet.

His piano would represent the Russian folk puppet Petrouchka, who would suddenly spring to life and ‘exasperate the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios’. The result was Stravinsky’s big stylistic breakthrough, the haunting ballet for Diaghliev in which the composer depicts homeland with ‘quick tempos, major keys, smells of Russian food, sweat and glistening leather boots.’

Before the snap and crackle of Stravinsky’s most Russian ballet score, Edward Gardner conducts Ravel’s savage sabotaging of a Viennese waltz. La valse is a wild ride that will suck you in to the vortex of its own wicked self-destruction.