Dance of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers) - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
The choir that I was around age seven or so in performed in the
The Nutcracker. We were the angelic
aaaa-
aaaahs in the background of
one song. It seemed glamorous when I first heard we'd be doing it; imagine people other than our parents paying to hear us sing!
When we went to rehearse, though, the choir shuffled through the back door
of the National Ballet and entered the strange grimy world backstage. We lined up in a hallway of unadorned whitewashed brick, because there was nowhere else to practice, and went through our warm-ups beneath a bare bulb. The orchestra pit was more of the same, spare and dark. I could hardly see anything- a little of the set, a few pairs of distant feet moving, a bright stage and a darkness that I assumed held the audience.
I eventually went to watch the ballet with my mum and was surprised again, because there was all the glamour I'd been missing! Airy glass and gold accents and ushers in tuxedos. It just never extended behind the curtain.
Maybe I like this brassy, jazzy arrangement because it sounds a bit more like the
Nutcracker grime I remember than the usual poised trills.