Hanna Kim plays the celesta at the David H. Koch Theater, where New York City Ballet performs “The Nutcracker.” Photo by Vincent Tullo/New York Times.
In Tuesday’s (12/3) New York Times, Joshua Barone writes, “There comes a moment in ‘The Nutcracker,’ a ballet full of fantasy of fantastical music, when the Sugar Plum Fairy dances to …a transporting sound: mysterious and otherworldly, delicate and playful…. The ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ is so familiar that it’s difficult to imagine that when this music was new, in 1892, it was really new. And that’s because of the celesta. Only recently invented, the celesta was in its infancy when Tchaikovsky began to imagine how he might write for it. Since then, its sound has spread throughout classical music and into pop, often with the same magical effect … Mahler requested that there be not one, but three if possible in performances of his Sixth Symphony…. Strauss deployed the celesta’s sound in the lustrous, dreamy Presentation of the Rose scene of his opera ‘Der Rosenkavalier.’ Similarly heady is a passage from Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’ that incorporates the instrument. Bartók included it in his idiosyncratically orchestrated Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta … In the 20th century, the celesta began to appear on Top 40 charts.” The article includes audio clips of the instrument performing a variety of music.
