The Slutcracker never thought to improve Tchaikovsky's music. But our own 16-track recording allows us to shade its moods as we want and highlight the score in ways that help us dance. Maybe it's blasting a trumpet note dancers use to mark a turn while audiences are whooping. Or inserting the perfect effect to tell of the Dildo Prince's travails. And always big, fat bass lines as dirty as they can be that lower the center of movement from a ballerina's shoulders to his hips. This is a fine recording by a wonderful orchestra that should make more traditional productions blush.
"Good music can stand reinvention. Great Music is enriched by it. Whether it's Chinese mushrooms bobbing about in Disney's Fantasia, a troop of Mouse Kings visiting Monty Python's Royal Hospital for Overacting or Sugar Dish lacing herself sinuously around a pole at Somerville Theatre, each new telling of The Nutcracker reveals hidden corners, new insights into Tchaikovsky's great score. The kaleidoscope of Tchaikovsky's orchestration, the long, unfolding contours of his melody, the stately architectural forms, are all revealed in new colours by the whips, the strippers, the clowns and bondage gear of Slutcracker. And, yes, by the dildos too." - Mikel Toms, Conductor/Director, Czech Orchestra Recordings.