PETER ILJITSCH TCHAIKOVSKY 1840–1893
SLEEPING BEAUTY DORNRÖSCHEN
DRAMATIC SYMPHONY ARRANGED BY KRISTJAN JÄRVI
Sleeping Beauty is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most iconic theatre music compositions
of all time. Yet it’s also a fairytale ballet that many seem to have heard about but don’t really know.
This recording shares the spirit of my previous Tchaikovsky releases on Sony – of The Snow
Maiden and Swan Lake – in bringing to life the wonder and enchantment of these great fairytale
pieces, which have fallen into a strange category of art that has lost some of its appeal in the
theatre world with the evolution of technology. One can imagine, for example, The Snow Maiden
finding its place as an audio-visual concert experience, or presented as a musical film like Disney’s
Frozen, which has its roots in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen.
Great music will always remain great music, but it constantly needs to be updated, not only interpreted.
Making a dramatic symphony from a ballet is a step in this direction of constant reinvention,
because times change and technology evolves. We need to keep these masterpieces alive by
modernising them; we could call it a more involved form of interpretation. And it’s an ongoing process
with a long history: Mendelssohn reorchestrated Bach, and Mahler reorchestrated Beethoven
and Schumann, just as today we find Max Richter and Steve Reich reworking music by Vivaldi
and Radiohead.
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic is a trailblazer in this respect, renewing the heritage of the Nordic
lands around the Baltic Sea which it calls home – a regional culture to which Russia very much
belongs, and which would not be the way we know it today if composers like Tchaikovsky had
not travelled to places like Estonia to pick up melodies that find themselves in this piece as well
as in his symphonies.
With this recording we present not only a new version of an old masterpiece but also a new
approach to performing. In March 2019 we toured Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Russia
with a show called ‘Nordic Pulse’. Sleeping Beauty was part of that tour and was recorded after our
concert in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. All our tours are conceptually based around
creating a concert experience and are not only focused around the repertoire or soloist being a
draw but also on a sеt list of pieces that together represent an idea. ‘Nordic Pulse’ is, for us, the new
impulse of the north that we want to convey. It is also the name of our new documentary, a film
which shows how we’ve instituted new approaches, including performing pieces completely
from memory, with choreography, with virtual sеts in the form of projections, and with lighting,
as in a theatre.
Playing by heart is not done to impress, or show that we have the capacity to memorise complex
scores, but to evolve the orchestra as an art form into a living, breathing organism where the
main sensation is not reading music but expressing ourselves intuitively and building collective
trust in our innate intelligence. This frees us from concentrating on prerequisites and allows us to
focus on the delivery of the message, and on reaching to the emotional core of each other and
our audience.
I am so excited to present to you this music, which is some of most ingenious writing that any
composer has ever produced. It was lived and breathed and danced and played and sung through
our bodies as instruments, while we stood, swayed, stepped and moved to the pulse and were
the storytellers of all its beautiful moments.
Kristjan Järvi
1 Introduction 2.19
ACT I
2 March 1 ** 2.43
3 Dancing Scene: Entrance 2.02
of the Fairies
4 Pas de Six 1.27
5 Crystal Fountain Fairy * 0.16
6 Enchanted Garden Fairy * 0.09
7 Breadcrumb Fairy 0.32
8 Fairy of the Songbirds ** 0.30
9 Violante (Fairy of 0.46
Ardent Passions)
10 Lilac Fairy 2.29
11 Carabosse (The Bad Fairy) * 0.46
12 Scene (Aurora’s 16th Birthday/ 3.52
Scene of the Knitters) **
13 Garland Waltz 1.52
14 Aurora is Introduced to the Suitors * 0.44
15 Rose Adagio 2.45
16 Dance of the Maids of Honour 0.28
and Pages
17 Aurora’s Variation 1 ** 1.58
18 Coda 1 ** 0.36
19 Act I Finale (Charm) ** 0.50
ACT II
20 Act II Introduction 1.16
(Prince Désiré’s Hunting Party) **
21 Blind Man’s Buff 1.20
22 Dance of the Duchesses 0.33
23 Dance of the Baronesses 0.33
24 Dance of the Marchionesses 0.25
25 Farandole (Scene) 0.15
26 Dance (Mazurka) 1.46
27 Desiré and the Lilac Fairy * 0.35
28 Pas d’Action: Desiré sees Aurora ** 2.25
29 Aurora’s Variation 2 ** 0.18
30 Coda 2 ** 0.55
31 Panorama 0.41
32 Entr’acte 1.31
33 Symphonic Entr’acte: Sleep 1.37
34 Act II Finale: Aurora’s Awakening ** 1.08
ACT III
35 March 2 ** 0.21
36 Polonaise 1.49
37 Pas de Quatre 1 ** 0.32
38 The Silver Fairy 0.42
39 The Sapphire Fairy 0.41
40 The Diamond Fairy 1.22
41 Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat 0.45
42 Pas de Quatre 2 ** 0.42
43 Cinderella and Prince Fortuné 0.29
44 The Blue Bird and Princess Florine 1.31
45 Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf 0.30
46 Cinderella and Her Prince ** 2.13
47 Tom Thumb, His Brothers 1.08
and the Ogre
48 Pas de Deux: Entrance 2.36
49 Prince Desiré 0.52
50 Aurora 0.39
51 Pas de Deux: Coda 1.16
52 Sarabande 1.53
53 Finale 2.19
54 Apotheosis 3.43