I for one do not overlook ballet music - it is as you say (often) beautiful - though I find it has to be approached, listening-wise, in a different way to a say a symphony, or chamber piece. Best of all one should see the dance movements - without which it is little like an opera without the stage. Still, lots to enjoy simply as is through a decent set of speakers or headphones.
I for one do not overlook ballet music - it is as you say (often) beautiful - though I find it has to be approached, listening-wise, in a different way to a say a symphony, or chamber piece. Best of all one should see the dance movements - without which it is little like an opera without the stage. Still, lots to enjoy simply as is through a decent set of speakers or headphones.
I wanted first to reply first to Sharik, but your post (KRoad) provides me with a 'better' entry, if you don't mind. What I wanted to say to Sharik (and now to you) is how much I regret the lack of sensibility on my part for ballet, that is to say the dance forms, not the music. I have attended a couple of ballet performances but have always been left totally ... unmoved. If I may reveal my philistine side, I find classical ballet to be so utterly kitsch. On the other hand, I have been to performances of 'modern' ballet (or dance) where the 'idiom' of the physical gestures I found much more engaging, for example dance troupes with the 'Merce Cunningham' touch, for want of a better term.
So once again, no problem with the ballet music (well, that depends), but certainly a big problem with understanding what the dance side is all about. Maybe I should stick with the football.
Great list! I also like Coppélia. From my childhood, when I listen to music, I always imagine people dancing to it. I do wonder, though, if that makes me a bit shallow compared with those who listen to the musical qualities of music, pure and simple.
I love ballet. The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Sylvia, La Source, La Bayadère, Don Quixote, Paquita, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Tale of the Stone Flower, Les Ruses d'Amour, Raymonda, The Seasons, The Limpid Stream, The Firebird, Petrushka, Daphnis et Chloé, Bacchus et Ariadne, etc.
At least, those are some of the ones I have on CD The only problem is that only a few are regularly performed and it can be difficult to find performances of the rest.
Daphnis & Chloe/Ravel,
Sacre/Stravinsky,
Aubade/Poulenc,
Agon/Stravinsky,
Belkis/Respighi,
Petrouchka/Stravinsky,
Miraculous Mandarin/Bartok,
Firebird/Stravinsky,
La Peri/Dukas,
Alla & Lolli/Prokofiev and
La Tragedie de Salome/Schmitt.
The Russians and the French rule in this genre, generally speaking ;-).
Some ballets have great music which should not be overlooked (many of the ones mentioned above). But there is a lot of ballet music (esp.eighteenth and nineteenth century) which is intentionally, impossibly bland -- because ballet masters didn't want it to upstage the dance.
Ballet has never been "popular", even back in the day- it has always took a back seat to Opera. It's too bad that the Viennese masters of the classical/romantic eras didn't take MORE interest in ballet music. They certainly composed tons of minuets and waltzes . Mendelssohn created one of the greatest works of ballet music ever(but he didn't know it) when he composed incidental music to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1842. George Balanchine used this music when he choreographed the ballet of the same name in the 20th century. I'm surprised this hasn't been successfully done more often. I've often thought that Mozart's Magic Flute would make a good ballet- it's great music and a silly story, which are the requirements. I would guess that it has been tried but, if it had been, it didn't stand the test of time and is not around today. At least not that I know of.
Well that's my take on it. Maybe you have a different one.
it wasn't back then but it is popular (relatively to the opera) these days that we already have such masterpieces as Spartacus, The Stone Flower and The Golden Age -
How's about a bit more of 'Bayadere?'...from a dance point of view, it's my favourite ballet.
I think this relatively recent dvd release of The Royal Ballet's production is probably the best available in terms of performance and blu-ray presentation!
But I really enjoy Nureyev's production for Paris Opera, too...
Ah! And the last thing before I overload this thread
Dance technique and staging aside, I really think that musically, the Russians perfected the genre... After Tchaikovsky, ballet was a whole different game...
Here's one of my favorite moments. Gavrilin's Anyuta:
With reference to your post, Sharik....I'm afraid that I cannot comment on how good or bad Nureyev was as a choreographer. But my recommendation for the dvd of his 1992 Paris Opera production was based totally on the excellence of the performances both by the principles and the corps de ballet. Below is an excerpt from a review in the 'New York Times' for when the production was presented in the USA.
" The United States premiere of the staging he completed three months before his death in January triumphed on Wednesday night through the outstanding dancing of its principals: Isabelle Guerin, Laurent Hilaire and Elisabeth Platel.
Appearing before a packed opera house as part of the France Danse festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here, these three stars offered a performance to remember. Brilliantly, profoundly, confidently, they searched and found the emotional core of a ballet...."
Edit. I just want to mention also the Royal Ballet production from the early 1990's by Natalia Makarova because that featured perhaps my favourite Nikiya, danced by Altynai Asylmuratova. The dvd isn't the best in terms of visual quality...the youtube link below reflects this but is worth a watch for her performance.
TalkingHead, do you mean American football? I have a colleague in New York who's always told me that watching (American) football is like watching ballet - and he is a huge fan of both. I could never get either...
TalkingHead, do you mean American football? I have a colleague in New York who's always told me that watching (American) football is like watching ballet - and he is a huge fan of both. I could never get either...
RD
Football American or European is beyond me too, as is classical ballet, unfortunately. What's curious to me is that even though a complete ignoramus about this form, I 'respond' with more 'engagement' when faced with a dance troupe nor dressed in tutus making the 'expected' moves. I really can't express it better than that. I know I must come across as some sort of hooligan in all of this, but it's not about the music.
music, maybe, because these days they perform the scores in tempos way too slow. Swan Lake, for example, is impossible to listen to, for the tempo is so slow, should be played much faster actually like this -
Recordings of classical ballet scores are often purposely recorded at the wrong tempos so that it will be impossible for schools and small companies to use the CDs to perform the ballets -- can't dance the ballet to music at the wrong tempo.
Daphnis et Chloe
The Rite of Spring
Petrouoshka
The Firebird
Swan Lake
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Classical Music Forum
2.6M posts
40.5K members
Since 2004
A forum community dedicated to classical music for musicians and other enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about composers, compositions, arrangements, collections, recordings, techniques, instruments, styles, reviews, classifieds, and more!