Firma Melodiya presents a complete recording of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty.

This ballet was finished in 1889 and has been one of the greatest masterpieces of musical and ballet art for more than a hundred years now. Tchaikovsky created the ballet in association with the outstanding ballet master Marius Petipa who later worked on The Nutcracker as well.

“The matter is not only about slapping up some commonplace ballet music. I have the impudence to conceive a genre masterpiece”, Tchaikovsky wrote.

The Sleeping Beauty stands out not only for its perfect synthesis of music and choreography inspired by the plot of Charles Perrot’s fairy tale. Tchaikovsky created a new type of 'symphonized ballet' where the images evolve and the main idea of the victory of good over evil is realized through musical means. This is what makes The Sleeping Beauty so popular in concerts too, where it, as a rule, sounds as a symphonic suite.

This recording, made in 1980 by the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov as part of the Anthology of Russian Symphonic Music, presents a complete score of Tchaikovsky’ ballet, including the numbers usually omitted in the choreographic productions. You have a chance to hear a truly remarkable performance of The Sleeping Beauty as it was conceived by the composer.