The Nutcracker, Act 2
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born at Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka Province, Russia, on May 7, 1840, and died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He composed the ballet Shchelkunchik (The Nutcracker) between February 1891 and April 4, 1892, to a scenario by Marius Petipa after Alexandre Dumas’s version of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” The first performance (concluding a double bill that opened with the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s short opera Yolanta) took place on December 18, 1892, at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, with choreography by Lev Ivanov.
The score of The Nutcracker calls for 3 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets and bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine, glockenspiel, castanets, triangle, celesta, two harps, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
Tchaikovsky’s works are among the imperishable classics of the ballet repertory. In his own lifetime, though, his success as a ballet composer was distinctly limited, though this did not dissuade him from trying again. At the time Tchaikovsky began writing for the dance, the term “ballet music” was often used in a pejorative sense, since most composers of ballet music officially connected to ballet companies were virtually required to be musical non-entities, churning out yards of tinkly, rhythmic, square, undistinguished stuff for the dancing masters to decorate with movement. Composers who attempted to do something more substantial in their ballet scores — like Delibes in Sylvia — were criticized for being “too symphonic.” Tchaikovsky loved the ballet music of Delibes (1836-1891), finding it a strong encouragement to his own ballets, in which he created a full-scale dance-drama combining solos, ensembles, dramatic (danced) narrative, and set pieces such as characteristic dances, all in a cohesive structure. As a result, every one of his major ballets—Swan Lake (1875- 76), Sleeping Beauty (1888-89), and The Nutcracker (1891-92) — was either an outright failure or, at best, a limited success in its first production. He did not live to see even the beginnings of their worldwide success.
Tchaikovsky himself regarded The Nutcracker as less significant than his two earlier ballets, largely because the scenario foisted on him lacked the kind of consistent dramatic story line he preferred. The basic plot came from E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose sometimes macabre tales could be expected to provide exactly the proper grist for Tchaikovsky’s mill. But in the scenario proposed by the choreographer Petipa, the plot was drastically simplified, confining the real story (with its “symphonic” music) to Act I. From a theatrical point of view, Act II is anticlimactic — though it is just the opposite in a concert performance, where the attention is on the music alone.
The first act, set in a German home on Christmas Eve, is a charming fantasy of a Christmas present — a toy nutcracker — that comes to life and leads the other toys in battle against the Mouse King and his army. When Clara, to whom the Nutcracker has been given, saves the Nutcracker’s life in the climactic battle by throwing her slipper at the Mouse King and killing him, the grotesque Nutcracker turns into a handsome prince and takes Clara on a journey to his magical kingdom, “Confiturenbourg” (what we might call the Big Rock Candy Mountain!). The entire second act is devoted to divertissements, dances introducing the inhabitants of this land. Since there is no more plot (though some modern productions attempt to create further story lines), everyone can just sit back and enjoy the dancing and the music, which in and of itself is a sheer delight: Tchaikovsky’s gift in the composition of colorful characteristic dances for such scenes remains unsurpassed. Indeed, it is precisely these dances that quickly became the most popular part of the score, in the form of a concert suite that had its first performance even before the ballet itself.
Though Petipa had created the scenario and planned to choreograph the ballet, he became ill (he was in his seventies) and had to withdraw; the task fell to his assistant, Lev Ivanov, who had already distinguished himself in the two lakeside scenes (Acts II and IV) of Swan Lake. The mounting was lavish in the extreme both for The Nutcracker and the short opera Yolanta that was premiered at the head of the evening’s program. Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatoly, “The staging of both [opera and ballet] was splendid, but that of the ballet even too splendid — one’s eyes grew tired of this luxuriance.” The critics were divided. The St. Petersburg Gazette declared, “A more tedious work was never seen.” But the St. Petersburg News-Sheet proclaimed, “Concerning the music... it is hard to say which number is best, for everything from beginning to end is beautiful, melodious, original, and individual.”
The present performances include all of Act II, i.e., most of the music familiar as the “Nutcracker Suite” (minus the overture) plus the numbers normally heard only in the theater. The curtain rises to show the palace of The Kingdom of Sweets (No. 10, Scene, Andante). A lulling 6/8 theme decorated by swirling harps and later by flute and clarinet scales hints at the elegance of the palace. Soon the Sugar-Plum Fairy appears to welcome the travelers to the delights of her kingdom. Tchaikovsky, while on a visit to Paris, had heard a recently invented keyboard instrument called the “celesta” (for its “heavenly” sound); he knew that it was exactly what he wanted to characterize the delicate other-worldliness of the fairy, and had an instrument secretly shipped to him in Russia, so he might be the first composer to use the new effect. The audience was surely enchanted when the Sugar-Plum Fairy appeared with her suite, accompanied by the shimmering sound of celesta, two harps, and upper strings in harmonics. This music is unthinkable today without the sound of the celesta, but when Tchaikovsky published the score, he allowed for optional substitution of piano, since the newly developed instrument might not be available in some theaters. But he also added an admonition: “The artist who performs this part must be a good pianist.”
No. 11 (Scene, Andante con moto) depicts the reception of the travelers. Clara and the Prince are welcomed by the Fairy, the prince’s sister. Celesta and harp combine with fluttertongued flutes (another new technique; Tchaikovsky added a footnote to the score to explain how the flutists were to produce the effect) and a sinuous clarinet. In a faster tempo (Moderato), twelve pages lead Clara and the Prince forward to tell their tale. In an Allegro agitato (developed from themes first heard in Act I), the Prince mimes the story of his fight with the Mouse King and reveals how Clara saved his life. In stately grandeur the court hails Clara for her bravery (full orchestra). At a sign from the Fairy (oboes and clarinets, then horns and trombones added) a festive table is prepared, and the guests are entertained with a divertissement.
No. 12, the Divertissement, is built up of a series of short and very diverse characteristic dances representing particular goodies from the Kingdom of Sweets or episodes from familiar fairy tales. Petipa’s scenario not only described the character of each dance, but also its length and meter. Tchaikovsky followed his prescriptions quite closely, finding the discipline a stimulation to his powers of invention, which he feared were on the wane.
First comes No. 12a, “Chocolate,” a Spanish dance featuring a difficult trumpet solo and the sound of castanets. For No. 12b, “Coffee,” an Arabian dance, Tchaikovsky borrowed a Georgian folk lullaby from a collection of Ippolitov-Ivanov and arranged it in a brilliantly simple but evocative way with a drone ostinato in violas and cellos and just a hint of tambourine. “Tea” is represented by a Chinese dance (No. 12c) with brilliantly skirling flute and piccolo over staccato bassoons and plucked strings. It is cut short suddenly, making way for the vigorous Russian dance, “Trepak” (No. 12d), based on a traditional Russian melodic formula (the same figure appears in the finale of his Violin Concerto) that grows in energy and drive to its Prestissimo conclusion. No. 12e, the “Dance of the Mirlitons” (reed pipes), is gently pastoral rather than the “Tempo di polacca” that Petipa requested; the emphasis on woodwinds (especially flutes) in the outer sections is balanced by the brass interlude in the middle. “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and her Children” (No. 12f) is derived from a traditional French fairy tale; Tchaikovsky quotes old French tunes probably learned from his much-loved French governess and found in a collection of French children’s songs in the composer’s library. The tune heard at the outset (oboes, clarinets, and bassoons) is “Que t’as de belles filles, Girofle, girofla!” A contrasting 6/8 tune is “Cadet Rousselle.” This is followed by a return to “Que t’as de belles filles” worked up in a faster tempo to bring the Divertissement to an end.
The next number, the Waltz of the Flowers (No. 13), is among the greatest of all symphonic waltzes, and a thorough contradiction to Tchaikovsky’s fears of failing inventive powers. Its evocative opening presents a hint of melody taken up by the horns as the first tune of the waltz proper. And though it passes in an instant, what a magical touch the diminished-seventh harmony on the fourth note of the tune is, coming unexpectedly after a straightforward melodic arpeggio of the D major triad. An answering melody is divided between strings on the one hand, flutes and clarinets on the other. Still more tunes follow, varying in range, instrumentation, and phrasing, so that the waltz seems to build and build with its characteristic “lift” to the final coda.
Balletomanes expect a pas de deux between the principal male and female dancer. From the plot of The Nutcracker, we would expect such a dance to take place between Clara and the Prince. But the original Clara was only twelve years old and scarcely ready for such a demanding dance, so the duet (No. 14, Pas de deux) was given instead to the Prince and the Sugar-Plum Fairy. Soon after the original production, though, when the part of Clara began to be taken by more mature dancers, the opening section — built on a descending scale melody in the cello that builds to a surprisingly passionate climax — was given to her. Variation I is a vigorous tarantella for the male dancer. Variation II is for the female dancer, who must be the Sugar-Plum Fairy regardless of whether Clara dances the beginning of this number: it is this movement that more than any other established the celesta as an instrument in the orchestra and still represents its most familiar use. The delicacy of the celesta’s sound perfectly matches the sweetness of this personification of the Kingdom of Sweets. The pas de deux closes with a lively coda, after which the entire Court joins in a final tribute to Clara (No. 15, Final Waltz and Apotheosis), which efficiently and expertly recycles themes from the opening of Act II in newly rich scoring.
Steven Ledbetter
Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
The first Boston Symphony performance of music from The Nutcracker was of the Nutcracker Suite, in a Pension Fund concert led by Max Fiedler on December 13, 1908, followed by subscription performances of the suite on December 24 and 26. Seiji Ozawa led BSO performances of the complete score in December 1990 (at which time it was also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon), and then a single performance in December 1996, followed the next night by one in Washington, D.C. The entire Act II was first played by the orchestra under Carl St. Clair, substituting for Gennady Rozhdestvensky, in August 1986 at Tanglewood and had its first subscription performances at Symphony Hall under Seiji Ozawa in December 1996.