Music Chat: Driving With Delibes (Road Music 1)

What to listen to when you're on the road--an occasional series of chats in which I make some suggestions to help you get from one place to the next, relaxed and refreshed. In this first talk we'll consider two ballet masterpieces by the criminally underrated Léo Delibes: Coppélia and Sylvia. Both offer more than 90 minutes of colorful, atmospheric, tuneful and vivacious music that cheats both time and the distance.
Musical Examples courtesy of Naxos Records

[@rosstwele8966]

So many resonances of other pieces! The Mazurka is suspiciously close to Offenbach’s Can-Can, Siegfried’s horn call as already mentioned, and I hear Elgar’s first Pomp & Circumstance March in the Russian March. The great thing is that every time the Delibes is better!

[@stefanoruggeri100]

We will never thank you too enough for such advices!

[@Danzig987]

I completely agree about Delibes ballets for the road, and other ballet scores do the trick nicely as well. My go-to music on lengthy road trips also includes the nine Dvorak symphonies and the seven Weingartner symphonies. Put these on, and the miles just melt away!

[@markzacek237]

Back in my chemical engineering days, I had an office mate who would occasionally complain, “I have a Delibes headache,” which meant that only after-hours time spent with Sylvia (his favorite) could cure him. He and I got along great!

[@Danzig987]

I'm sure there are many guys who would just love to spend some after-hours time with Sylvia! ;-)

[@markzacek237]

@@Danzig987 hmmm. I think I could have phrased that better.

[@guillermovillacorta4590]

Ha ha...I am a Chemical Engineeer too, and I love this Delibes music!!.

[@user-lf8mq2li3i]

Thanks for this! Always happy to see Delibes being mentioned. Besides driving, I also like listening to his music when cooking or cleaning the house! I'd like to recommend two other titles I really love in Coppelia to whoever interested in sampling it: the "theme slav varie" in Act I; it's 7 minutes of pure joy and passion, and "Musique des automates" in act II, a very fun piece where the girls mess/play with the "robots" they found in the house they break into.

[@2906nico]

I just love this music.

[@johnh5958]

You should make a program on the worst music for the road. My top 10 would be Threnody, The Rite of Spring, Gurrelieder, anything by Cage, anything by John Luther Adams, 8 Songs of a Mad King, Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, albums of Varese, albums of Widor's solo organ works, and Gregorian chants.

[@mogmason6920]

Apparently, Wagner’s Ring and Verdi’s Requiem are the most dangerous pieces of music to drive to! To hell with that!!! Sylvia is probably one of my favourite ballets, probably because of the ridiculous fairytale plot and loud brass. To those who think that Swan Lake is “Too Wagnerian,” they’d shit themselves if they heard Sylvia! Also: I’d mention that that the prima ballerina in “Coppelia” plays a nationalistic Germanic lady with the brilliant name of “Swanhilde!” Swan Lake crossed with Brünnhilde, now that is comic genius!

[@pabmusic1]

(Phillip Brookes) Great stuff. You could have added the dances from Le Roi s'Amuse. Delibes was very influential on (of all people) Elgar, who spent much of his youth playing these pieces in orchestras. In a way he was a mix of Delibes, Bizet, Mendelssohn and Schumann, rather than Brahms and Wagner.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Definitely The March from Sylvia left it's mark on Pomp and Circumstance No. 1.

[@mogmason6920]

The Fanfare from Sylvia (Les Chasseresses) has a bit of a “Ring” to it (excuse the Wagnerian pun). Definitely some Siegfried in there, with a bit of Walküren mixed in for good measure!

[@ralphbruce1174]

I like the DVd of Coppélia from the Bolshoi with a fantastic dancing Natalia Osipova . And the music is so great. I like so much the mazurka and the waltz of the hours. and Swanhilda and her friends is one of greatest choregraphy of all time And the Bolshoi, wow, and wow

[@josephng5272]

Couldn't agree more.

[@guillermovillacorta4590]

Hello Dave, I am so glad you made those wonderful remarks on Delibes' music...I have heard this music since I was a child, in the early 60s...my mother used to somehow played it, and would say, "This is Coppelia"...or Sylvia...I always thought that was Fairy Tale Music, with castles and princesses...Also, there is a French Horn intro in Coppelia that reminds of the Walhala leitmotiv...Delibes, as all know, was at the 2nd Bayreuth festival...Great posting,

[@brianrein]

A favorite driving/music memory: driving on an empty highway through a big city's downtown at midnight, accompanied by Sibelius 7. Something about the icy cool beauty of the music, paired with empty roads, pitch-black sky, fast car, and lots and lots of twinkling skyscraper lights makes it an OK modern, urban substitute to a starry Finnish night sky in the 1920s. Just don't get stopped at any lights or you'll get impatient.

[@dianelewis4774]

When I'm driving around town , I've listen to the whole box of Westminster Legacy chamber music. I found that chamber music doesn't hurt the ears, because it doesn't have the loud FFs - or the very PPs. --no vollumn knob turning. And a lot of those composers give me a natrual high, like Mozart.

[@matthewv789]

I always had to think about this when picking music to play in a bookstore I worked in. I was about the only one to pick classical, but I had to avoid anything too dramatic, intense, or dynamic. Chamber music was always a great choice, or baroque concertos.

[@randywolfgang4943]

Magazines?? I learned so much about the voice from Conrad L Osborne ( the BEST and still happily busy, Peter G Davis (unhappily just passed) Ken Furie and Will Crutchfield I have a complete bound edition from the beginning up to the 80s. Wonderful to read even today

[@jfddoc]

Yes! And Harris Goldsmith and Abram Chipman (who turned me on to Markevitch).

[@matthewv789]

For the chasseresse I was rather thinking of siegfried’s horn call. And that March, I’ve played it and totally forgot. (In college we took it, along with a bunch of other French music including Berlioz Romeo et Juliet and no fewer than four versions of La Marseillaise, on tour to French Polynesia and Australia for the French bicentennial.)

[@christianstark2381]

Siegfried's horn call came to mind immediately for me, too!

[@bobgraf7510]

Instead of listening to Delibes while driving, I tried it while working out in the gym. That also worked OK.

[@folanpaul]

I love Delibes, and I have those Naxos versions. Great choice! I believe that the idea of using the Flower Duet from Lakmé was introduced to the director of the British Airways advert by the composer Howard Blake, famed (and blighted in his own way) for 'The Snowman'. Another one for the road for me has always been the waltzs, polkas, and marches of Waldteufel, in the Marco Polo series with Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra / Alfred Walter - great music for passing the time, toe tapping, and very charming.

[@minquino]

Great recommandation! Absolutely. I am all with you. Will be enjoying my next ride across Zealand even more. (Last night I heard Le conte Ory by Rossini, hmm... actually his balletmusic makes up for a pleasant drive too.)

[@douglashuntington408]

Mr. Hurwitz thanks for these vids! Never even heard of this dude so I went out to my used CD store and found Sylvia by The national Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bonynge and coppelia by Nangano with the opera de Lyon in Erato. It’s the only ones they had but they are marvelous! Thank you again rock on!

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Wonderful! Enjoy!

[@chrismusic1180]

Great idea! I’ll start today with the Neeme Järvi/Royal Scottish version of these suites on Chandos.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

A good choice.

[@chadweirick67]

The British airways commercial came out in 1989 LOL

[@dmntuba]

The music everyone knows, didn't know you knew it or know where it came from ...who knew?🤣

[@martinhaub6828]

Nebraska for the Ring...I need to remember that. (Although Howard Hanson's music would be appropriate.) My Los Angeles to home is a complete Glazunov symphony cycle. Fits perfectly. Although in a Mazda Miata with the top down a lot of the subtlety is lost...Delibes would be really lost, but it IS great music.

[@russki1978]

There's also Les Filles de Cadix, a Spanish song that Delibes wrote years before Bizet composed his Carmen. It is very entertaining and at least it's an original tune unlike the Habanera from Carmen which Bizet didn't even come up with himself.

[@Don-md6wn]

The Fremaux Icon box covered a lot of new French repertory for me, but no Delibes. I found a cheap used EMI disc of Mackerras conducting the New Philharmonia and Covent Garden Orchestras that has highlights from Coppelia and Sylvia plus ballet music of 2 other French composers - Messager's Les Deux Pigeons and Gounod's Faust. P.S. I have never driven across Nebraska but it can't be worse than driving across South Dakota, which I have done.

[@alanmcginn4796]

Don. Do you like that box? The only fremaux I have is his Berlioz requiem from the Berlioz Warner box. Would you recommend?

[@Don-md6wn]

@@alanmcginn4796 Yes, I'd definitely recommend it. It is very well played and recorded.

[@alanmcginn4796]

Ok. Great. It’s so interesting. Before Dave started this KZbin channel I honestly thought I had a really wonderful music library. This channel has really diversified my taste.

[@Don-md6wn]

@@alanmcginn4796 Same here. I didn't have probably 2/3 of the music in the Fremaux box. I've beefed up just about everything outside of the Germanic/Austrian core since I started watching these videos - particularly French, English, Czech, Russian, Scandinavia and Spanish/Latin. Another good cheap well recorded box with repertoire you might not have is a 6 disc box on Dorian with the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela conducted by Eduardo Mata called Latin America Alive.

[@alanmcginn4796]

I think I will take a shot on this one. Presto has the whole box for 20 dollars on digital download.

[@kevinspruit5359]

That Les chasseresses from Sylvia has always sounded suspiciously like the title theme from Star Trek Voyager to me.

[@ralphbruce1174]

I like classical music on the road, but I also like country music. LOL

[@matthewv789]

In small rural farm towns, classic country feels right, especially in mono in between farm reports.

[@ralphbruce1174]

In my car I have some Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, and Hank Williams. and SAmson FRancois, and Oscar Peterson. DAvid Oistrakh et Sol GAbetta, and french signer like Brassens, Ferré. etc and Dean MArtin

[@OuterGalaxyLounge]

If you say young people don't know Lily Pons, they'd disagree and say they know Lele Pons, a massively popular KZbinr with the young whose name is pronounced the same way.