Les Sylphides (Fokine, 1909)

For those who are no ballet-buns or who are not sure about what they remember:
Les Sylphides is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc. Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with music by Frédéric Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46. In that form it was introduced to the public in December 1893, conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
The ballet, often described as a "romantic rêverie", was indeed the first ballet ever to be simply that. Les Sylphides has no plot, but instead consists of many white-clad sylphs dancing in the moonlight with the poet or young man dressed in white tights and a black top. (Source: Wikipedia)


Chopin, as we discovered earlier, later had an relationship from 1937 to 1947 with George Sand, the French writer, before he died in 1949 - see post A Cluster of French. For a really nice book about Chopin, try Chopin: The Reluctant Romantic by Jeremy Siepmann (quite cheap: used on amazon). Siepmann alternates chapters about Chopin's musical development and heritage (accessible also to interested non-musicians like me) with accounts of his personal life, namely also going into depth about his relationship with George Sand! A very enlightening and inspiring read, especially if you listen to the pieces referred to in the book as you go along. This is amazon's description:
"Chopin remains one of the best-loved and most-played 19th-century composers. Friend of Liszt and Turgenev, lover of George Sand and lionized by Parisian society, he was seen by many as the archetypal romantic. Less well-known, however, was the inner turmoil of a man who felt largely out of sympathy with the age he came to personify. Drawing on much new material (including many previously unpublished letters), this text provides an account of Chopin's colourful life along with a discussion of the music. The appendices cover the subject of Chopin interpretation, for which Siepmann interviewed many leading pianists, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Tamas Vasary, Emmanuel Ax and Mitsuko Uchida."


Les Sylphides:
This is the whole ballet in three parts: Although the beginning and end tableaux are cut off rather criminally, and the transitions are not as accurate as one would hope, the quality is fine:




3:32 - 7:20 is the solo for my exam in Part 2