For his next entertainment, Drosselmeyer conjures the exotic perfumes and coffee of Arabia. Tchaikovsky obliges with sultry tones. Petipa had asked for 24 to 32 bars of 'charming and voluptuous music'; the composer created 102 bars of wonderfully erotic music. The rocking accompaniment is played by muted strings, on top of which the woodwind and then upper strings weave their melodies. While the other national dances are fast and foursquare, this movement sounds a note of eerie danger in the Kingdom of Sweets. Like Strauss's Salome and just over a decade avant la lettre, Tchaikovsky's Araby is the stuff of high-Orientalist imagination. The dance is all suggestion, texture and orchestration. Harmonically, it's relative static, with the G-D drone continuing throughout. The melody is coloured by 'Arabic' ornaments and reaches more passionate heights in the middle section. But like many of Drosselmeyer's tricks, this is the stuff of consummate artifice.Today's Track on Spotify.
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Laura McCulloch, Ryoichi Hirano and Johannes Stepanek in the Arabian Dance
in The Royal Ballet's production of The Nutcracker
Photograph © ROH/Johan Persson
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