I was mostly interested in seeing if Balanchine would keep the music up to speed and I find he has. But this is, of course, what Russian ballet is all about. I think they were! I've always thought Balanchine was very old-fashioned in his attitudes, particularly in the ballerina-and-her-cavalier prototype. She is still hugging the Nutcracker.I'd seen parts of this production before but I wanted to refresh my initial reactions and see if they were correct. Clara awakens to find herself by the Christmas tree in her own home. In the Land of Sweets, the Sugar Plum Fairy treats them to a series of fantastic dances. The Nutcracker turns into a prince and leads Clara to the Land of Snow where they are entertained by dancing snowflakes. The mouse army is on the verge of winning when Clara hits the Mouse King on the head with her slipper, causing him to fall to the ground and his mouse army to scurry away. The Nutcracker awakes and leads an army of toy soldiers in a fight with the mice. The toys come alive and the room is filled with an army of mice led by the Mouse King. At midnight, the tree seems to grow bigger. The guests leave and the Stahlbaum family goes to bed but Clara, worried about her Nutcracker, steals downstairs to check up on him. Her jealous brother, Fritz, grabs it and breaks it but Drosselmeyer deftly repairs it. He gives the Stahlbaums’ young daughter Clara a nutcracker that she adores. Godfather Drosselmeyer, a clock and toy maker, arrives and presents dolls and gifts to all the children. The Nutcracker story takes place around a Christmas Eve celebration in the Stahlbaums’ grand house with a beautiful tree surrounded by family and friends. The different versions contain varying amounts of background material and links to online content. The Nutcracker, in which the boy band Libera makes a brief appearance in the wordless children’s chorus of The Waltz of the Snowflakes, appears in two editions: the 2-CD Standard and Experience editions containing the complete ballet score. The release marks the conductor’s first Tchaikovsky recording and is one of several releases this season celebrating Rattle’s 30th anniversary on the EMI Classics label. Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker have recorded the most performed ballet of all time, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. “Some of the tunes are so famous that you even forget that someone had to write them: what could be more perfect than the pas de deux after the Waltz of the Flowers, which is just a G major scale? We fell in love with this music, rehearsing and performing it, and we think it is magic.” Simon Rattle
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