Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker

Description

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)Nutcracker (Highlights)The music of Tchaikovsky, in spite of the reservations ofcontemporaries at home and abroad, must seem to us both essentially Russian andessentially and firm I y in the West European tradition. In Vienna the critic EduardHanslick was able to complain of the "trivial Gossack cheer" of the finale ofthe Violin Concerto, but in Russia Tchaikovsky never went far enough to please theself-appointed leader of musical nationalists, Balakirev. While by no means a miniaturist,he nevertheless excelled in his mastery of the smaller forms necessary in ballet, writingmusic that displayed his remarkable gifts of melody and skill in orchestration.Tchaikovsky was born in 1840, the son of a chief inspector ofmines in Government service in Votkinsk and educated at first at home by a belovedgoverness and later at the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, in preparation for acareer in the Ministry of Justice. This he was to abandon in 1863, when he entered thenewly established St. Petersburg Conservatory, the first of its kind in Russia. Threeyears later he joined the staff of the new Conservatory in Moscow, directed by NikolayRubinstein, brother of the composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein, who had founded itscounterpart in St. Petersburg.Tchaikovsky, abnormally sensitive and diffident, and tormentedby his own homosexuality that seemed to isolate him from the society of the time. hadalready made a considerable impression as a composer, when an unwise, face-saving marriagein 1877 brought complete nervous collapse and immediate separation from his new wife. In1878 he was able to resign from the Conservatory, thanks to the assistance of a richwidow, Nadezhda von Meck, whom he was never to meet but who offered him both financial andmoral support. After the St. Petersburg performance of his Sixth Symphony, Tchaikovskydied, it is thought by his own hand, compelled to this step by a court of honour of hisfellows from the School of Jurisprudence, after threats of exposure and scandal resultingfrom a liaison with a young nobleman. His death was widely mourned both in Russia andabroad, where his music had won considerable favour.Tchaikovsky's ballet TheNutcracker was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1890, damned with thefaintest of praise by the Tsar, who remarked that it was "very nice". Thecomposer himself expressed dissatisfaction with his music for The Nutcracker, a subjectproposed by Marius Petipa and the Imperial Theatre Directorate in 1891 and first performedat the Maryinsky in December, 1892, again to a cool reception. The music itself, however,had already proved popular enough in a suite arranged by Tchaikovsky for a concert earlierin the year.The story of the ballet is drawn from E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale, Der Nussknacker und der Mauserkonig. Set in theeighteenth century, initially in the house of the President of one of the German states ofthe period, the ballet opens with a children's Christmas party,