Danse sauvage—which bristles with extremist indications such as Presto con fuoco, il più marcato possibile, Furioso, Prestissimo; and
fffs abound—takes the basic premise of a waltz and subjects it to relentless ironic exaggeration: it is both comic and disturbing at the same time, with the kind of insight that suggests a kind of madness. Ornstein described the piece as a ‘picture of primordial beings in all the savage abandonment of the wildest of corybantic revels’.
from notes by Martin Anderson © 2002
