Music: Ballet Swan Lake

[hi there]

Do you know of a recording (full orchestra) of the Black Swan's pas? I've purchased a cd of Swan Lake and it's not on it. Wikipedia says that this portion was not writting by Tchaikovsky. I have a simple piano only version, but would like to find a fuller version.

[Clara 76]

I'm going to leave this one for Mel. I vaguely remember another thread about this not too long ago, so until he answers, you may just want to browse through the pages here and see if you can find the answer!

[Mel Johnson]

Actually, the music is there, if it's a recording of the entire score. The problem with most recordings is that the orchestras generally use the 1877 score, where that pas de deux is in the first act. For the 1895 version, the original score was edited by Riccardo Drigo. The music is all Tchaikovsky, but it's not all used in the performance-cut version, and the ballerina's variation is an arrangement by Drigo of a piano piece by Tchaikovsky. I don't know whether there is any currently-available performance-cut "Black Swan" out there.

[hi there]

Thank you so much, I'll go back and check the 1st act more carefully. We weren't sure if the addition of Drigo prohibited its use on the recordings labeled Tchaikovsky.

[Mel Johnson]

Nope, they're both well out of copyright. Conductors are musicians, and usually not musicologists, primarily. They are most likely to go with "composer's original intent" rather than a "real-world" pragmatic edition of the music meant for performance.