Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Lyzko
That sounds like a wonderful experience! I only know one thing related to Chopin better than hearing, playing Chopin. There's even a ballet set to Chopin, Les Sylphides.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Lyzko
Absolutely.
Chopin always had more popular contemporaries, for some reason, but he was always the best. He still is probably the best composer to ever live.

News / NATO expansion in northern Europe - great news for Poland [136]


I hope so! 🙏🙏🙏

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Lyzko
I hate Schumann! Terrible composer.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@AntV
I know it's a "bad opinion" , I just can't stand his awful music! It makes me feel physically sick! I'll be murdered for that!

I have, recently. I like it a lot, very interesting it is.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Miloslaw
It's the best kind of music though! You heathen!

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Miloslaw
To (indoctrinate) save your soul, you might like some pieces by Stravinsky and Mussorgsky. And I'd recommend to even people who hate classical Shchedrin Humoreske, just because it's perfection in music form.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]


A composer's music goes far beyond their nationality.


Because Chopin, though my personal favourite composer, didn't compose infinite pieces, and there are other genius composers also. Of course, Chopin is still the best :).

Why does no one feel sorry for the others, who can never reach Chopin's level?

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]


I love it. Especially in the ballet, preferably danced by Maria Bulanova.


Beautiful piece. More popular than Shchedrin's. I'd have to say think they're different but equal.

Jon, you know many Russian Soviet composers hated the Soviet times, don't you? You can't really criticise someone for being Russian. It's like criticising someone for being a woman or old or young, it isn't a choice.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
I've only heard one. I liked it a lot.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Bobko
That's ABT or NYCB the ballet? I think that's in Lincoln Square, but I've never been to the USA, so I'm not sure of the place. There are better ballets than Spartacus. Actually, in New York you can see all the Balanchine ballets at NYCB, that many of them can't be seen elsewhere.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Bobko
NYCB is the Balanchine company. ABT is more classical. I think Spartacus is more of a Russian thing than American. If you ever want to see it again, you'd be seeing it better in Moscow at the Bolshoi. NYCB, from what I've seen online, has an excellent performance of Balanchine's Jewels. ABT mainly does generic ballets, Swan Lake, Giselle, etc, but not the best productions after Baryshnikov left, because it's run by Kevin McKenzie, a worse director than even the infamous Fateyev. Actually, ABT is getting a new director I think next year or this, Susan Jaffe.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Bobko
It might have been. Maybe Bolshoi. I don't think it's in the Mariinsky repertory, or anywhere but Bolshoi that I know of.
If you want a really interesting ballet, watch the Legend of Love, but I think it's only performed at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky. You can tell a company's country by looking at the dancers. Russians have beautiful arms and back in either style, French have beautiful legs and feet, English is just beautiful classical line, American is fat dancers, Italian have beautiful balance and ballon, there are more like Bournonville, but I've rambled enough already. And Russian dancers are taller and thinner than others.

@jon357
Not Russian music, though it has gone a little off topic. Who cares, it hard to stay on one topic of conversation.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
What do you think of Paderewski's Minuet? It's one of my favourite pieves.

News / NATO expansion in northern Europe - great news for Poland [136]



Russian politics, Russian army or... Russia as a country, it's culture and Russian people?

Law / I'm from Nigeria, but want to be a Poland Citizen [44]

@Neczypor
Because he's Nigerian therefore likely scammer.

Wait a minute, this thread is from twelve years ago!

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
Tales of Hoffman is very good opera. Pretty much everything Offenbach composed is nice.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]


It's a beautiful ballet! Especially danced by Olesya Novikova, I think there's a recording of the variation out of context somewhere.
I think Petipa once made it into a four act with extended music by Minkus, for the Bolshoi Kamenny in St. Petersburg, in I think 1873 or 1874. It's strange that he could alter the score that way, I can't imagine butchered. Though messing up the music was common at the time, look at Swan Lake or (the worst) Don Quixote.

youtu.be/watchv

It's the whole pas de deux. With Novikova and Alexander Sergeev
I'm not sure the link worked, probably not.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
I was referring to Don Quixote ballet, which was made in Russia, though by Petipa, who was French. It's a very Russian ballet though, to the level of La Bayadère, but it is danced abroad.

I must be smart today, I managed to remember the "e" in Quixote. I always forget, in Russian it's Дон Кихот, nothing extra at the end. I'm so dumb I though Paquita was Pakhita because it's Пахита, with the х in the middle, which normally transcribed to kh.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
I'm not very familiar with the opera, do you mean the one by Massenet?

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Lyzko
No, Don Quichotte. He composed Le Cid, Manon, Chérubin, others as well, quite a lot.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

The one by Wilhelm Kniezl?

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
I think the same theatre with Polish National Ballet. It's quite a small company I think, but the dancers are very nice, particularly the former Bolshoi soloist Chinara Alizade (deserved to be a Bolshoi prima, but she has real Bolshoi style, so was a soloist).

I don't like Massenet either, not the really a special composer, boring I'd say.
@Lyzko
Yes, Thais as well he composed. In my opinion, a very bad opera.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@jon357
Interesting. From the picture I looked up, the building is really wide and a similar colour to the Bolshoi. How big roughly is the stage?

History / What makes you feel Polish? [160]


That's as bad as "RuSSian". Please don't. SS is stupid and pointless.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Novichok
Don't worry, no one did.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

@Lyzko
Saint-Saens is the one I forgot! I love his music, especially (overdone, I know) the Swan (it isn't called the Dying Swan as I think it is). I think Bizet composed Symphony in C as the Balanchine ballet. Very nice composer.

I think also Adolphe Adam is good, he was the composer of Le Corsaire and Giselle.

UK, Ireland / Boris Johnson - is the new British PM a popular figure in Poland? [150]

Why? Did he do something?

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]


It's impossible to say. There are so many of wonderful composers in the past, who can tell who's the best? Apart from the obvious superior Chopin of course.

On the side, this has been such a civilised thread for PF, thank you to everyone of you who has made a post on here so far.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Paulina
I can't say I've read 1984, but I know the plot, and.... well..... what is there to say? Isn't it Animal Farm that's about Russia though? Does 1984 have anything to do with?

Is that what Russia is seen as? We do have FSB agents in Vaganova right now even, not much privacy or freedom judging by what I've heard of other countries.

Lech Walesa is a idiot. It's a disgusting idea.