Eugene Onegin: Waltz

The summer seasons he conducted in the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park - ten of them between 1856 and 1865, two more in 1869 and 1886 - were among the least likely of Johann II’s many commercial enterprises.

However, as the result of a deal with the Tsarskoye-Selo Railway Company, which was eager to publicise its line between St Petersburg and Pavlovsk, the composer made a small fortune in roubles, the Russian audience had the privilege of being the first to hear such favourite pieces as the Tritsch-Tratsch and Pizzicato Polkas, and an unknown composer called Tchaikovsky had his first opportunity to hear his music performed in public.

It was partly through his contact with Johann Strauss and the experience of hearing him conduct his own music that the waltz became one of Tchaikovsky’s favourite dance forms. There are big waltz episodes in each of his three ballets, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and all kinds of waltz-time passages in his instrumental and orchestral music. If the waltz in the second act of his opera Eugene Onegin is rather less resplendent than the polonaise in the third act, it is because the latter is featured in a ball in a palace in St Petersburg whereas the former is performed at a rather more modest party in a country house. Another reason is that, while he treats the polonaise as an orchestral show piece and preserves its formality, Tchaikovsky makes dramatic use of the waltz and its reputation as a sexy number. Onegin dances first with Tatyana and then with Olga, the fiancée of his best friend Lensky - the sight of which, as Onegin mischievously intended, sends Lensky into a fit of jealousy, with ultimately tragic results.