Tchaikovsky: Suite from Swan Lake

The South Birmingham Sinfonia will perform this piece in their Summer 2019 concert on 13th July 2019.

Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake is today one of the best known of all ballets, but was a failure at its first performance. It tells the story (based loosely on German and Russian Folk stories) of the princess Odette, turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The ballet was first performed on 20 February 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The music was deemed to be "too noisy, too 'Wagnerian' and too symphonic." The Germanic origin and foreign names of the story was treated with suspicion and the coregraphy and dancing considered second rate. Nevertheless the ballet had a run of 41 performances, even in its first production. The ballet was revived in 1895 at St Petersburg with a revised score.

1. Scene

2. Waltz

3. Dance of the Swans

4. Scene

5. Hungarian Dance: "Czardas"

6. Scene

©RWK for SBS, February/March 2019

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake