New Classical Tracks: Stewart Goodyear, 'The Nutcracker', arranged for piano

Stewart Goodyear - The Nutcracker: Complete ballet arranged for Piano (Steinway & Sons)

"It was always a Christmas tradition with my family, we would always see The Nutcracker with the National Ballet," recalls Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear. "So I loved the music. And there was so much incredible music there so I just didn't do the suite, I had to do the entire thing because every second of that ballet is so magical."

Thus inspired, Stewart challenged himself to create a piano transcription of Tchaikovsky's orchestral score for The Nutcracker ballet. "Five years ago, I transcribed the march of the Nutcracker and just included all the instruments, all the counterpoint, everything into that piano transcription," he explains, "and I was delighted by how pianistic it was, and it made me very curious about whether the entire ballet was just as pianistic. So I went through the whole score and … it was a real labor of love. It took me four years to do this transcription, but it was absolutely worth it."

Stewart loves a good story; add music to it, and it's even more powerful. As far as he's concerned, The Nutcracker is kind of like the Walt Disney production of music. "Just like Disney, the storytelling, the colors, the animation, the music, the choreography of the characters and their movements … I just felt so many parallels between The Nutcracker and Walt Disney and it felt like when I was hearing the orchestration of the ballet, I was seeing Technicolor," he says.

You might be wondering, why take a beautiful orchestral score like that of The Nutcracker and reduce it to just one instrument? Here's what Stewart told me: "Well, similarly to Ravel's Alborado del Gracioso and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, both the piano solo version and the orchestra version have a power even though it is very different. So I thought, 'Well, what if The Nutcracker was transcribed in a way that made it sound like it was originally for solo piano?' And the piano is an instrument that has many colors. It could imitate the voice, it could imitate the cello, it could imitate the viola if the pianist sets his or her mind to it, so I thought this is a project that could work."

Stewart thinks as you listen to this transcription, you may even discover a few additional details that could be overlooked in the orchestral score. "The piano has the upper hand in a way because the piano could also make it sound very edgy," he says. "So the battle with the mice — the piano could imitate a squeak even more so than a piccolo. Or even with the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, the piano can come very close after playing Debussy or Ravel or indeed after playing Russian repertoire, one can know how to imitate a celesta."

Tchaikovsky was asked to use the celesta, a new instrument at the time, to create the sparkling sound of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. Her dance with the Prince is probably the most famous. In this transcription, Stewart Goodyear doesn't disappoint. "When I did the transcription again, I wanted to write it in a way that sounds like it could have been originally for piano solo," he explains. "So the arpeggios, those harp arpeggios, and just that feeling of the triplet, I wanted it there throughout. And that meant I had to sacrifice the timpani rolls to really make it sound like this ballet that was in triplets. That feeling, that heartbeat, that pulse had to be there. And to capture that part, that drama, and indeed that choreography, that's what I went with."

The original score for The Nutcracker is filled with magical rolling arpeggios that put the harp — sometimes two lucky harpists — at center stage. Stewart says that's one of the things he loves most about this music. "That's what I think made the transcription so delightful to do was the fact that the harp really plays a part," he says. "It's really like a paint stroke of that Disney animation. And the mysterious descending harp scale when Klara is alone, she doesn't know what's happening, the clock is about to strike 12, and before the tree grows, the Nutcracker comes to life. I always feel like it's Pinocchio when he finally turns to life and has all these adventures — some horrific, but with a bit of comedy there — and you're on the edge of your seat the whole time."

Stewart Goodyear made this recording of The Nutcracker on his birthday last February, so he really was in the land of sweets, nibbling on birthday cake during each break. "After a while, my cheeks started to hurt because I couldn't stop smiling when I was playing all of the dances," Stewart recalls. "And basically I was living that childhood of going to The Nutcracker because to me, Christmas is not complete until I hear or see The Nutcracker."

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