# The ballets of Ludwig Minkus



## Marsilius

If you're an admirer of _La bayadere _or _Don Quixote_, it has often been difficult to find out much about their composer Ludwig Minkus. A new paperback edition of the only detailed study of the man and his work - _The ballets of Ludwig Minkus _by Robert Ignatius Letellier - has just been published. If you would like to know more, I have written a review of it for MusicWeb International that may be found here: The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus (Cambridge Scholars) – MusicWeb International


----------



## BBSVK

Robert Ignatius Letellier does a lot of interesting things in music - written publications and recordings. I follow him on facebook.


----------



## Becca

I vaguely remember a telecast of the American Ballet Theater in which their then conductor, John Lanchbery was talking about ballet music in general wherein he was trashing the quality of Minkus' music. Then the following year's telecast was of a Minkus ballet during which Lanchbery laughingly commented on what he had said the previous year. Unfortunately I can't remember what he had to say, nor what the ballet was, but probably either _La Bayadère_ or_ Don Quixote_.


----------



## mbhaub

Minkus was a composer I knew only by reputation and disparaging comments for a long, long time until that Naxos recording of Don Quixote showed up. The music wasn't as cheesy and inane as I was led to believe. Certainly not as well scored or inspired as the ballets of Tchaikovsky or Glazunov, but for their intended purpose it's easy to hear why his music was so useful to dancers. A minor composer to be sure, but immortal nonetheless.


----------



## Marsilius

You can still find plenty of those disparaging comments online, often from professional reviewers who, I think, ought to know better. The point is that Minkus wasn’t attempting to do the same thing as Tchaikovsky. His aims were more limited and more specific - but he was just as successful in achieving them as Tchaikovsky was in achieving his own (different, wider and more ambitious) aims. Letellier, incidentally, is very critical of what Lanchbery did to Minkus’s score of _La bayadere._


----------



## mbhaub

I'm very critical of what Lanchberry did to Nutcracker. That one un-Tchaikovskian dance he added in is like painting over the Mona Lisa.


----------

