The piece
The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is the fairy's variation in the second act of The Nutcracker (1892), which Tchaikovsky also placed in his suite, Op. 71a. The theme, in E minor, was given to the celesta. This piano version is the one the London publisher Augener issued in the early twentieth century under the name of Stepán Esipoff, checked here note by note against that edition. It keeps everything: the plucked introduction, the theme in chords, the falling bass lines, the cadenza the celesta plays alone, and an ending left hanging on a B chord.
The theme is played in chords of three or four notes, staccato and pianissimo: keep the hand close to the keys and the wrist supple. In bars 32 to 36, the quasi arpa cadenza passes from one hand to the other in very quick groups of four notes: practise it slowly at first, linking the groups without a gap. The right hand then plays an octave above the written notes, under the “8” sign.
