Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty

Charles Perrault’s fairy story The Sleeping Beauty delighted Tchaikovsky “beyond all description,” he said, and inspired what he rightly considered to be one of his greatest scores - even though, on its first performance in St Petersburg in 1890, the Tsar could apparently find nothing more enthusiastic to say about it than “Very nice!” The Waltz, which is performed at Princess Aurora’s twentieth birthday celebrations in the first act, is not as developed as the great waltzes of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker but it is a no less attractive example of Tchaikvosky’s favourite dance form. What is really “nice” about it is the seductive melody presented by violins after the short but exhilarating introduction. Very much the main theme of the piece, in spite of the lively syncopated episodes which follow its every appearance and the entry of a new melody on woodwind in the very middle, it is heard four times in all, always on the strings and always to delightful effect.

G.L.