Favourite Waltz or Waltz-like Sections in Larger Works

[Brian]

I decided to make this today's listening theme and took some suggestions from the thread!

Melanie Bonis: Suite en forme de valses. Bucharest SO; Benoit Fromanger
Rontgen: Symphony No 10. Rheinland-Pfalz State PO; David Porcelijn
van Gilse: Symphony No 2. Netherlands SO; David Porcelijn
Atterberg: Symphony No 5. Stockholm SO; Stig Westerberg

All off NML. The Bonis is a pretty lush late-romantic suite, very brief. The Rontgen is a wonderful parody work: the first half is all Sturm, Drang, and Brahmsian sobriety, but then it flips into a cheery waltz. Love it.

First listens ever to Bonis and van Gilse.

[amw]

The death waltz in the finale of Atterberg's Fifth is, indeed, brilliant and one of the few Atterberg bits that actually sticks with me.

I've always heard the middle section of the first movement of Alkan's Grande Sonate Les quatre âges as a sort of waltz, likewise the main theme of the slow movement of Franck's Symphony in D minor, but I'm not sure everyone would agree with me.

(Also pretty much every Chaikovsky piece in 3/4 and a few that aren't )

I suppose there's also the ball scene from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique if that isn't too mainstream for today's GMG

[kyjo]

I suppose there's also the ball scene from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique if that isn't too mainstream for today's GMG

Hey, I listed it, so it couldn't be too mainstream!

[some guy]

 

Great idea, once the rotting corpse smell wears off.

Anyway, agreed about the waltz in Nielsen's third. The echt Beethoven sense of humor there. (Tease, tease, tease, punchline.)

But I'm surprised that no one mentioned the waltz in the last movement of the sixth. I'll never forget the first time I heard that. Wow.

There's also a similarly surprising waltz in Strauss's Also Sprach, where triplets in a duple meter turn into an actual waltz, in triple meter. Similarly surprising, though not nearly so funny.