When Do We Dance?

French pianist Lise de la Salle combines a sense of adventure with extraordinary virtuosity in this imaginative album inspired by her lifelong love of dance. Whisking us across the world over the course of a century, between 1850 and 1950, she explores the sultry tango of Piazzolla’s Argentina, relishes Ravel’s modernist, Parisian take on the Viennese waltz, and delights in the haunting innocence of Bartók’s Hungarian folk dances. There are some unexpected gems along the way, including Manuel de Falla’s frenzied “Danza ritual del fuego” and Debussy’s curiously French “Mazurka.” De La Salle possesses a dazzling technique, which she places center stage in a mesmerizing transcription of jazz pianist Art Tatum’s eye-popping performance of “Tea for Two” and, for a stunning last dance, Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic Romantic vision of a polka.