Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Piotr Ilic Ciajkovskij

Lo schiaccianoci (suite) - Trascrizione di Mikhail Pletnev

 

The Nutcracker is the third and last of Tchaikovsky’s great ballets. In 1891, after having been commissioned to write it, the composer set to work on it before his departure for America, and he took it up again on his return from the United States; the score was finished in 1892. The complete ballet was performed for the first time at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 6 December 1892, under the direction of Eduard Napravnik and with the choreography of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, but a symphonic suite drawn from it had already been performed with enormous success the previous 7th of March, also in St. Petersburg. The ballet’s subject is based on Alexandre Dumas’s adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice. Tchaikovsky’s music evokes the story’s childlike and fable-like atmosphere, which is centred upon the dream of a little girl who has fallen asleep next to a Christmas tree. The ballet suite on today’s programme is based on a piano transcription by the Russian pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev.

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