There is certainly no shortage of Audio Spectaculars available on the site. A record such as this, so rich, natural and effortless, has distinctly different qualities that we feel are every bit as vital to the critical audiophile's enjoyment of Tchaikovsky's music.
The exceptionally QUIET vinyl of this pressing doesn't hurt either.
Side One - The Complete Suite No. 1
A++, Super Hot, with some of the richest, sweetest, most Tubey Magical sound you will ever hear in your home. The hall is huge. There is not a trace of phony sound anywhere to be found, and the most pronounced effect it has on the listener is to make him relax and forget entirely about the sound. With this record the music is all.
Side Two - Ansermet's Excerpts
A+ to A++, every bit as rich and full-bodied as side one, but a slight smear on the strings can be heard, and some congestion creeps in during the loudest passages, so we docked it a half plus over side one.
Ansermet Is The Man
Ansermet's performances of the two suites are hard to fault. In addition, the gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time; more amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall known to us. There is a richness to the sound that exceeds all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least. It's as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.
We like our recordings to have as many Live Music qualities as possible, and those qualities really come through on a record such as this when reproduced on the full-range speaker system we use. It's precisely this kind of big, rich sound that makes audiophiles prize Decca-London recordings above those of virtually any other label, and here, unlike in so many areas of audio, we are fully in agreement with our fellow record lovers.
Other Recordings
We played Shaded Dogs by Reiner and Fiedler, both of whom opted against using the Suites as Tchaicovsky wrote them, preferring instead to create a shorter version of the complete ballet with excerpts of their own choosing.
On some copies of this album the strings are dry, lacking Tubey Magic. This is decidedly not our sound, although it can easily be heard on the hundreds of London pressings we've played over the years. If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do. Our 17D3 is ruler flat and quite tonally unforgiving in this regard. It makes our shootouts much easier, but brings out the flaws in all but the best pressings, exactly the job we require it to do.
The Enchanting Celesta
One novelty in Tchaikovsky's original score was the use of the celesta, a new instrument Tchaikovsky had discovered in Paris. He wanted it genuinely for the character of the Sugar Plum Fairy to characterize her because of its "heavenly sweet sound". It appears not only in her "Dance", but also in other passages in Act II. (However, he first wrote for the celesta in his symphonic ballad The Voyevoda the previous year.)
Tchaikovsky also uses toy instruments during the Christmas party scene. Tchaikovsky was proud of the celesta's effect, and wanted its music performed quickly for the public, before he could be "scooped." - Wikipedia
Wikipedia on The Nutcracker Suites
Tchaikovsky made a selection of eight of the numbers from the ballet before the ballet's December 1892 première, forming The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a, intended for concert performance. The suite was first performed, under the composer's direction, on 19 March 1892 at an assembly of the St. Petersburg branch of the Musical Society. The suite became instantly popular (according to Men of Music "every number had to be repeated"), but the complete ballet did not begin to achieve its great popularity until after the George Balanchine staging became a hit in New York City.
The suite became very popular on the concert stage, and was featured in Disney's Fantasia. The Nutcracker Suite should not be mistaken for the complete ballet. The outline below represents the selection and sequence of the Nutcracker Suite culled by the composer.
I. Miniature Overture
II. Danses caractéristiques
a. Marche
b. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy [ending altered from ballet-version]
c. Russian Dance (Trepak)
d. Arabian Dance
e. Chinese Dance
f. Reed-Flutes
III. Waltz of the Flowers
Tchaikovsky also made a second suite, less well known and less frequently played, of some of the other numbers. [Ansermet has used some of the excerpts you see below and combined them with others to make his own "custom" Suite No. 2.]
Act I, Tableau I: Nos. 4 & 5
Act II: Adagio from the Grand Pas de Deux
Act II: Introduction, Scene Dansante, and Spanish Dance
Act II: Final Waltz and Apotheosis
The Nutcracker Ballet
The Nutcracker was Tchaikovsky's last ballet. Working with a trite story in which there is no real human drama, Tchaikovsky was freed from having to worry about content, which allowed him to indulge his gift for memorable melody and ignited his imagination as an orchestrator. While the feeling of the ballet can at times seem rather shallow - a child's Christmastime vision of the Kingdom of Sweets - the skill with which Tchaikovsky dresses up individual numbers in the most evocative orchestral colors still delights the ear.
Even where his melody is not extraordinary, Tchaikovsky's treatment is. The main motive of the Act II pas de deux is nothing but a simple descending scale, yet the way it is harmonized and phrased, and clothed in the warmest of string colors, endows it with powerful sentiment. Tchaikovsky's orchestration transcends the material in the overture as well; scored without cellos and basses, and with violins and violas divided into six parts, it conjures up the sound of a Classical orchestra with just a triangle and a piccolo added. A silvery, child-like, "play" overture, small in scale but full of glittering tinsel, it is just the thing for Christmas Eve.
The Nutcracker is typical of Tchaikovsky's later music in its delicate use of the strings, which provide shimmering backdrops to many of the scenes. But it shows a literalism unusual for the composer, especially in the children's voices in the "Waltz of the Snowflakes" and the children's instruments for several other numbers in Act. I. The writing for standard instruments is marvelously inventive, particularly in the Act II divertissement, where chocolate is represented by a Spanish Dance, coffee by an Arabian Dance and tea by a Chinese Dance. But the most wonderful touch of all is the solo celesta in the "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy," which so charmingly suggests the drops of water "spurting from fountains" called for in the scenario.
From liner notes
