The Tchaikovsky ballets
Throughout his career Tchaikoi/sky’s
instinct was for theatrical music, even in
many concert works. Opera was his first
ambition and he left us nine that were
finished (including Eugene Onegin and The
Queen or‘Spades), but alone among
composers forthe Russian Imperial
Theatres a century ago, Tchaikovsky
looked on ballet as deserving as much
musical imagination as he brought to
opera. He thereby set new standards in
his three original scores for dance: Swan
Lake (1877), Sleeping Beauty (1890) and
The Nutcracker (1892).
All three were commissioned for the
Imperial Theatres, with Swan Lake (for
Moscow) having a story based on an
image widely familiar in folklore, the
captive Swan~princess representing man’s
quest for an unattainable ideal.
Tchaikovsky had previously devised a
modest domestic entertainment on the
subject for his married sister and her
family while spending the summer with
them, but when he came to write the full
ballet several people had a hand in
shaping the story and he composed it
virtually as a four-part tone-poem.
The music is as carefully structured as
any symphony, with a central key (B, major
and minor) around which circulate mainly
flat keys for the forces of evil and
Icewitchment, sharp keys for the character
dances and divertissements. Both are
represented in the selection played here,
but the richness of musical invention and
initially poor choreography told against the
ballet at first: it disappeared from the
stage after a few seasons to become a
success only after Tchaikovskys death.
By the time he was lured back to ballet
more than a decade iater for The Sleeping
Beauty Tchaikovsky was also happy to
work closely with Marius Petipa, the great
French-born ballet-master at St Petersburg,
who mapped outa detailed sequence of
dances with suggestions for length and
musical character. Without following all the
details, Tchaikovsky found this useful, and
replaced the key-relationships of his
previous ballet with a musical structure
built from the contrast of dances for
narrative, mood and character.
Princess Aurora, whose music of the
"Rose Adagio" is the first to be heard in
this selection, is associated not with a
theme but with the waltz rhythm that
always drew Tchaikovsky's most fertile
invention: the "Garland Waltz" included
here, for instance. Aurora's “Wedding Pas
de deux" with the Prince is a major
highlight, as is an item of purely
descriptive music in the "Panorama" that
accompanies the Prince and the Lilac Fairy
to Aurora’s bedside. The ballet was
popular in Russia from the start; its wider
success in the world began with
Diaghilev’s lavish production for his
Ballets Russes at Lonclon’s Alhambra
Theatre in 1921.
The Nutcracker was composed as one
half of a double-bill with Tchaikovskj/’s
one-act opera, Yolanta, but some months
before the first night he took the unusual
step of allowing a suite from the ballet to
be performed at a St Petersburg concert.
lt comprised the Overture and music here
recorded, and almost every number was
encored, heralding the universal popularity
accorded the "Nutcracker Suite" ever
since. For reasons more visual than
musical, the full ballet was only a partial
success at its first performance, before it
became a perennial seasonal favourite
during the present century.
Tchaikovsky composed this music with
the intention of being charming rather than
dramatic. Among his own inventions he
made use of folk themes from Germany,
France and Georgia (the "Arab Dance" ln
this suite). His despair at the problem of
picturing the Sugar-plum Fairy in music
was solved, for himself and all his
listeners then and since, when he heard in
Paris the bell»like tones of the celeste, the
keyboard instrument then newly invented
by Auguste l\/lustel: Tchaikovsky had it
sent to Russia in strict secrecy so that he
would be the first to use it.
© NOEL Gooowin, 1987