| Marketing Copy | While the original SWAN LAKE ballet, the story of Prince Siegfried’s love for the Swan Queen, enchanted by the evil magician Rothbart to turn into a swan everyday, more or less succeeded at its 1877, Moscow premiere, Tchaikovsky was very concerned that the music be saved from the oblivion common to ballet scores. Inspired by the French composer Delibes, he thought to create a concert suite of the music. No further correspondence on the idea exists, but a Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20a was published seven years after Tchaikovsky’s death in 1900, containing six numbers from the ballet, though it remains uncertain whether they were selected by the composer or someone else, leaving the exact authorship of the suite unknown. This reduced orchestration by William McDermott of Act 2 gives ballet companies and orchestras more programming flexibility. Instrumentation: 1.1.2.1: 2.2.2.0: Timp.Perc(2-3): Hp: Str(4-4-3-3-3 in set). |
|---|