Ravel: La valse
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major
Nielsen: Symphony No. 5
Ravel: Boléro
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, Conductor
Alexander Toradze, piano
An invitation to families to join Ravel’s dizzying reinvention of the waltz and his hypnotic meditation on the Spanish bolero dance, beaten out by snare drum over a vast span.
That same drum plays a sinister role in Nielsen’s magnificent Fifth Symphony, its obsessive battering threatening to break up the orchestra’s performance in a thrilling battle. The second movement plunges us into a swinging sea of perpetual motion, where a sense of metric time is lost in the shining surge.
Acclaimed Georgian pianist Alexander Toradze performs Prokofiev’s most elegant and ethereal piano concerto, the glowing third.
Photo: Benjamin Ealovega