Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

About this arrangement

Tchaikovsky’s dance in E minor, arranged from the orchestral score. The right hand opens alone with the plucked string chords on the off-beats, then takes the celesta tune in sixths and thirds, mostly semiquavers, played short and light. The left hand takes over the pizzicato part: a bass note on each beat and a chord on each off-beat, with diminished chords (A sharp, C sharp, D sharp, G sharp) sliding underneath. The second phrase drops an octave over a bass falling from A sharp to F sharp and ends on a French sixth chord over C. Two bars of B7 arpeggio across two octaves lead to the return, where the tune moves up an octave and the left hand plays its bass notes and chords in pairs of semiquavers. The runs in bars 20 and 38 are demisemiquavers.

Practice tip: The accidentals are the real challenge: mark every D sharp, C sharp and G sharp before you start, and remember that each one lasts to the end of its bar. Play from the fingertips with a light, close touch and little or no pedal, and keep the left-hand chords as short as plucked strings.

A short history

The Nutcracker was Tchaikovsky’s last ballet, first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in December 1892, on a double bill with his opera Iolanta. The story comes from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by way of a French version by Alexandre Dumas: on Christmas Eve a girl’s nutcracker comes to life and takes her to the Land of Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy reigns.

Her dance is famous for its sound. In Paris in 1891 Tchaikovsky came across the celesta, a new keyboard instrument whose hammers strike steel plates, and wrote to his publisher asking him to buy one and keep it quiet, so that Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov would not use it first.

Tchaikovsky also drew a concert suite from the ballet, which was heard in March 1892, months before the ballet itself. This piano arrangement takes the opening of the dance and its return.

Quick facts

Tune

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1892

Level

Advanced (concert arrangements, full texture)

Key

E minor

Time signature

2/4

Length

38 bars

Tempo

Andante ma non troppo, crotchet = 66

Hands

Both hands on the grand staff: right hand on the treble staff, left hand on the bass staff

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal, church and classroom use

Questions and answers