Poster Couples waltzing
Couples waltz at the Viennese Ball, Feb. 24, 2007, hosted by the International Club at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Rick Phillips via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Learning to Listen: The Waltz

Learning to Listen: The Waltz

Because we'll hear loads of Vienna's famous dance from its annual concert on New Year's Day, this week's Learning to Listen looks more closely at the waltz: what it is, who wrote them and why it was considered racy in 19th-century Austria.

Program Playlist

Johann Strauss, Jr.
Voices of Spring Waltz (Fruhlingsstimmen)
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra/Antal Dorati, cond.

Peter Tchaikovsky
The Nutcracker: Waltz of the Flowers
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Erich Kunzel, cond.

Peter Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique": 3rd movement
Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre/Valery Gergiev, cond.

Franz Liszt
Mephisto Waltz No. 1
La Pietà
Angèle Dubeau, violin

Frederic Chopin
Waltz No. 6 "Minute"
Lang Lang, piano

Antonio Lauro
Venezuelan Waltz No. 3 "Natalia"
Sharon Isbin, guitar

Bill Evans
Waltz for Debby
Kronos Quartet
Eddie Gomez, bass

Aaron Copland
Rodeo: Saturday Night Waltz
New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein, cond.

Maurice Ravel
La Valse
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi, cond.

Richard Strauss
Der Rosenkavalier: Waltzes
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner, cond.

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