I think this is one of the best waltz ever. A very romantic, tragic, magical and utterly charming waltz composed originally for solo piano, later transcripted for orchestra.
Valse "La Separation" by Mykola Lysenko (1842 - 1912).
Performed by the Orchestra of the National Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, cond. by Volodymyr Sirenko.
In order to improve his orchestration and composition skills the young Lysenko traveled to St. Petersburg where he took orchestration lessons from Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in the mid-1870s, but his fervent Ukrainian national position and disdain for Great Russian autocracy impeded his career. He supported the 1905 revolution and was in jail briefly in 1907. In 1908, he was the head of the Ukrainian Club, an association of Ukrainian national public figures in Kiev.
Lysenko is widely considered to be one of the finest composers in Ukraine, by blood and by heart. During a time of stern Russification, when non-Russian languages and culture were censured toward assimilation, Lysenko headed the Ukrainian Clubin Kyiv, insisted on writing and publishing in the Ukrainian language (often, he was forced to publish abroad), and banned any of his works being translated into Russian. Lastly, he, as a musicologist, was passionate in studying the folk music of his native land, and went to great lengths to write genuine Ukrainian art music, avoiding the footsteps of his Western and Russian predecessors.
