Overture Magazine: 2016-2017 Season September - October 2016 | Page 47

program notes {
They are: “Chocolate” (a Spanish dance
with solo trumpet and castanets);
“Coffee” (an Arabian dance); “Tea” (a
comical Chinese dance with high flutes
over bassoons and pizzicato strings);
“Bouffon” (a vigorous Russian trepak
dance); and “Mirlitons” (a French dance
featuring toe-slippered flutes). Using a
Georgian folk melody and wonderfully
imaginative orchestration, Tchaikovsky
creates a little masterpiece of exoticism
for “Coffee.” The final dance of this set
features Mother Gigogne, who hides
her many children under an enormously
full skirt. Set to a vivacious tambourine
accompaniment, this charming music is
based on two French folksongs.
With its warm, romantic French
horns and glittering harp solos,
the “Waltz of the Flowers” for the
corps de ballet is one of the loveliest
Tchaikovsky, the Russian Waltz King,
ever wrote. Another highlight is the
exquisite “Dance of the Sugarplum
Fairy.” Here for the first time in
Russia, Tchaikovsky used the celesta,
whose bell-like tones bewitched him
when he discovered the newly invented
instrument in Paris. He promptly had
one shipped back to Russia, keeping its
presence a secret lest Nikolai RimskyKorsakov, always on the lookout for
new instrumental effects, should
use it first. It makes a perfect sonic
counterpoint to the Sugarplum Fairy’s
delicate en pointe dancing.
For the closing sequences,
Tchaikovsky unleashes a magnificent
descending melody, first heard