Composers like nothing more than coming up with a musical theme, and then elaborating on it, developing it, tweaking it, chopping and changing it, and rolling it out longer than a play-doh sausage. In the case of Ravel’s Bolero, popularised by the gold medal winning figure skating routine by Torvill and Dean at the 1984 Winter Olympics, the composer doesn’t alter his melody at all. Instead, Ravel takes us on an exploration of orchestration, using different combinations of instruments for each repetition of the tune, which gradually become louder and louder throughout. In this video of Ravel’s Bolero, maestro Daniel Barenboim takes a ‘less is more’ approach to conducting.