Boléro

One of the most controversial of all concert pieces, Ravel’s Boléro (1928) is both an incomparable feast for the ears – languid, modal melodies, crooning saxophones, Spanish dance rhythms – and a puzzle for the brain, as it is a work whose marvelous variety and sensational climax are built on mechanistic repetition. The composer himself once half-jokingly characterized it as “a crescendo without music.” This evening, the famous Boléro is matched ...