Ballet Music of Tchaikovsky

To think I've missed out mentioning the ballet music in the previous entry on the Royal Ballet. The music of our beloved Swan Lake is composed by the greatest Russian composer, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. A master whom I believe is on par with Beethovan and Mozart. To think that he's wasn't ranked inside the Mighty Five - the school of great nationalist composers of his day: Modest Mussogsky, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. But now, time has shown that Tchaikovsky's music has surpassed the rest of the others. He's the serious composer who, at the same time, brought to ballet music, the qualities it so badly needed at the time. Ballet composers are pretty much like seamstresses cutting material - made to fit. Listen to the music of Ludwig Minkus or Riccardo Drigo and one can easily understand how deary it can be. Tchaikovsky singlehandedly changed that scne with his daring exploitations of the orchestra and great musical plans.

The first Tchaikovsky's music I heard was his Symphony No. 5 and that certainly caught my attention. From a dark first movement to a grand, triumphant march in the final movement. Little did I realise that his ballet music would be so much better...

He led a tormented life due to his strange sexual preferences. And his biography suggests an emotional life of great depth and sensitivity. Listen to the Waltz of the Flowers in the ballet, The Nutcracker. It's such a decorative and lovely waltz, and listen carefully to the lower strings in that contrasting section, don't you hear them seem to weep in anguish? A flip side to the music. Despite his strange sexual preferences, he exercises a careful control in his music, freely acknowledging a feminine element together with a powerfully masculine one that is virile and exact. From his music, there is no element of hysteria which would be expected of someone with a life like him.

Out of his 3 currently most famous ballet music, only The Sleeping Beauty, was well received during his days. Both Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, ironically the two most famous ballet music today, were flops in his time, due to reasons like having overaged ballerinas, substandard choreographers and an orchestra that simply couldn't handle such a high level score. Now, these music are a must-have in the standard repertoire of any good orchestra. What a pity that people during his time have been robbed of such good ballet and music...

I'm really blessed to be able to get the tickets for the ballet. The Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra will be performing with Royal Ballet here. Hope that they'll be able to co-ordinate and bring out the essence of Tchaikovsky's music...