Search - Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Rachmaninov, Camille Saint-Saens :: Dance! - The World's Favorite Ice-Skating Music

THIS 2-CD SET CONTAINS A WIDE SELECTION OF popular classical pieces used by ice skaters in their programs at major international competitions, including the World Figure Skating Championships and the Winter Olympics. Competitive solo figure skating used to be based mainly on gymnastic and acrobatic movements, but the British champion skater John Curry was responsible for bringing the artistic and presentation aspects of men's figure skating to a new level by introducing elements of ballet and modern dance into his performances, and most subsequent skaters have continued to follow suit. In 1976, Curry's inspired routine to music from the ballet Don Quixote by Minkus (included in this album) won him a gold medal at the European Figure Skating Championship, the World Figure Skating Championship and the Winter Olympics. 1976 was also the first year that Ice Dancing for couples was included in the Winter Olympics. The British team of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean famously won the Olympic gold medal in Sarajevo in 1984 with a dramatic free skate to Ravel's Bolero (included here) which earned unanimous 6.0s for presentation. Some of the music on this album will be heard at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver in the routines of the South Korean skater Yu-Na Kim (Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F) and her Japanese rival Mao Osada (Khachaturian's Masquerade), as well as those of other leading skaters. The album also includes some specific recordings actually used in competition routines such as Maksim Mrvica's arrangement of Liszt's Totentanz (Michelle Kwan of the USA and Irina Slutskaya of Russia) and the violinist Vanessa- Mae's interpretation of `Nessun dorma' from Puccini's opera Turandot (Shizuka Arakawa of Japan and Denise Zimmermann of Germany).