For a young girl and for many other people besides, Christmas is not complete without a visit to the ballet usually to see one of the Tschaikovsky ‘greats’. In their own way, these ballets conjure up all the expectation, glitter and sparkle of Christmas. For a harpist, of course, this also  conjures up the expectation of playing a solo cadenza – the epitome of the sparkle!

Allegedly, Tschaikovsky did not really want to write this ballet which was a commission  from Vsevolozhsky who was the director of the Imperial Theatres. This was to be the third and last of his ballets. 

The story of the Nutcracker comes in a simplified form from an E T A Hoffman story called ‘the Nutcrakcker and the Mouse King’ combined with Alexandre Dumas’ ‘the Story of a Nutcracker’. The choreography was by the then renowned dancer Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. 

The tempi and number of bars for each dance (including this one) were in fact proscribed by Petipa and Tschaikovsky had to follow these instructions. It is hard to imagine that when the ballet was first staged it was not really a success. That came through the suite of music, including this Waltz which won the public round. 

The ballet was not performed complete outside Russia until 1934 here in England. It is said that today as much as 40% of North American  ballet company ticket takings are from the Nutcracker in the Christmas season.

Towards the end of the Nutcracker ballet in the second act there is a scene where all the ‘Sweets’ conjured up by the Sugar Plum Fairy come together and dance a Waltz in celebration of Clara and her magical Prince. This scene is heralded by a cadenza on the harp. 

Normally, after playing this the harp assumes an accompanying role, but I have created this abridged version of the Waltz so that the harp gets to have the tunes as well which would otherwise have been played by other orchestral instruments.