One piece of interesting trivia is that Ravel's Bolero has the undisputed worst cello part in the history of orchestral music. Not only is it mind-numbingly monotonous, it's entirely pizzicatto. I don't think Ravel had figured out that cellos are NOT guitars and are NOT meant to be strummed across all four strings for ten minutes. Or that cellists doing pizzicatto don't have the benefit of any small handy inanimate object to pluck the strings with, as guitarists do. We use our bare thumbs. By the end of the first read, one guy's thumb had blistered right open and was bleeding all over his century-old German masterpiece of a cello.
It's alleged to be orgasmic. If orgasms were really this boring, I'd take up quilt-making instead. Fortunately the alleged sexual connotations were not obvious us when we played it, so we escaped permanently associating eroticism with shrill clarinets whining on and on and on, and tired and blistered hands.
Needless to say, anyone trying to seduce this jaded musician with Ravel would meet a swift and violent response.