Birmingham Royal Ballet THE NUTCRACKER
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s newly appointed Principal Guest Conductor, Thomas Jung, Christmas classic.
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THOMAS JUNG, INTRODUCES THE CHR ISTMAS CLASSIC introduces the
came back home in a
Without a doubt The Nutcracker is one of my favourite ballet scores. For me the first act especially is like a symphonic poem that tells a story through music.
We hear Tchaikovsk y’s unending gif t for melody and there are new melodies almost every minute throughout the ballet. We also hear Tchaikovsk y’s sk ill as an orchestrator with his incredible ability to create magical colours in the orchestra. Right at the beginning, even before anything happens on stage, we are drawn into the fai rytale wi th Tchaikovsk y’s Miniature Over ture which evokes the character of a music box playing.
When I prepared to conduct The Nutcrack er for the fi r st time, I came across
the diary of Anna Brodsk y, who
recorded the origin of Tchaikovsk y’s inspiration for the piece.
In 1887 the composer had been invi ted by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Society to come and conduct some of his pieces. The violinist Adolph Brodsky, who had premiered Tchaikovsk y’s (declared as ‘unplayable’ ) violin concer to, had become a close f r iend, and Tchaikovsk y was invited by Brodsk y and his family to stay at their home in Leipzig over Chr istmas and New Year.
That was when Tchaikovsk y exper ienced his first German Chr istmas and he star ted to work on his Nutcracker soon af terwards. The first per formance of the ballet was held as a double premiere together with Tchaikovsk y’s last opera, Iolanta, on 18 December 1892, at the Imper ial Mariinsk y Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
In her diary Anna Brodsk y wrote that on Chr istmas Eve her husband collected Tchaikovsk y f rom the train station and they
sleigh. The fami ly were
decorating the Chr istmas tree as they wanted it to be shining brightly for when Tchaikovsk y ar r ived. On New Year ’s Eve the composers Edvard Gr ieg and Johannes Brahms were also invited:
‘ I t was more like a children’s par ty than a gathering of great composers. My husband had this feeling so strongly that, when dinner was over and our guests still remained around the table smok ing cigar s and dr ink ing cof fee, he brought a conjurer ’s chest – a Chr istmas present to my little nephew – and began to per form tr ick s. All of our guests were amused,
and Brahms especially, who
demanded f rom A.B. [Adol f Brodsk y] the explanation of each tr ick as soon as it was per formed.’
So what we hear in the score and what we see on stage in Si r Peter ’s production descr ibes that event beauti ful ly. I think Tchaikovsk y literally captured in his music what he experienced in Leipzig that very year.
Chr istmas, especially Chr istmas Eve, is a big thing in Germany. There’s so much mystery in the ai r and the children become very excited. You can read about in
it E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Mausekönig f rom 1816.
I think you have to see this whole ballet through the eyes of a child – it’s all about Chr istmas magic. And having a nutcracker is a famous German tradition – it brings you luck for the year to come.
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker returns to Birmingham Hippodrome on 21 November, with performances through to 13 December. Visit
birminghamhippodrome.com
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM fai r ytale Nussk nacker und
ENTERTAINMENT T HE NU T C R A C K ER
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