The Nutcracker Suite is a piano arrangement of the concert version of the ballet of the same name. Tchaikovsky included only a portion of the entire ballet music in the suite. From the first act of the ballet, we find the overture and the march, which opens the series of characteristic dances. The remaining dances come from the second act: the brief dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, whose leading voice in the original is notably almost entirely played by the celesta, the fiery Trepak, which recalls Tchaikovsky's national heritage, the Arabian dance with its soft melancholic touch, the Chinese dance set in an ostinato triple rhythm, the graceful flute dance, and finally the longest piece of the suite: the Waltz of the Flowers, with which Tchaikovsky expressed his musical connection to Johann Strauss in the penultimate year of his life. The suite was performed for the first time on March 7, 1892, at the ninth symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society in St. Petersburg. Difficulty level: 3-4.