In 1816, the German poet and writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann published a children's story in Berlin. It was a fairy tale about the adventures of little Klara in the fantastic world of live toys, which is headed by the title nutcracker. Decades later, the Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky accidentally found the French translation of Hoffmann's story. It inspired him to write a two-act ballet of the same title. Although the premiere of the work was not highly appreciated, in the following years The Nutcracker brought off great success, finally entering the canon of the most popular ballets of all time.
The Nutcracker plot is set on Christmas Eve, 24 December, so the performances of this work often take place at the time before Christmas. Once again, the Education Department of the National Forum of Music and the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic would like to draw on this tradition, but this year we would like to present The Nutcracker in a completely different production. This time, we will not see dancers on stage, and the only protagonists of the concert will be the orchestra and conductor. Composers often decide to make an orchestral suite from the music to the ballet, which is later performed on the philharmonic stage. The same happened in the case of The Nutcracker, from which the most beautiful fragments were put together in a symphonic suite op. 71a.
The concert will be an opportunity to better understand such issues as instrumentation, sound, character or tempo in works of music. It will be a lesson during which young listeners will learn to feel music better and understand its wonderful world.