Another year gone by without seeing The Nutcracker live. What in God’s name am I waiting for? Well, I don’t know. This Christmas season has been unusually chaotic and hard to plan. For me the problem was twofold, I think. First, there was the fact that Thanksgiving was as late as it can possibly be, so that once it was over, there was already less than four weeks to Christmas. That’s way too short a time to pack in everything. Second…well, this is the second Christmas since Mom died and…well, I’ll write about Dad some other time. Suffice it to say that it’s really sunk in this year that the old memories are just that: memories, and the old traditions have joined them.
But I still have some traditions, such as this series of posts. And putting aside two hours at some point, even if it is over several lunch breaks at work, to watch The Nutcracker. Here’s the one I took in this year. This is one of the more magical versions I’ve watched, and the music-making is superlative.
(I’m eschewing the Nutcracker Suite this year. Please make time to lose yourself in this fantasy world, if you can. I still think of my old college orchestra conductor, Dr. Janice Wade, when I hear the numbers that make up the Suite. I hope she doesn’t mind that Maestro Gergiev here does the last bars of the “Waltz of the Flowers” in a way that she personally did not.)
Yes, the period between Tday and Xmas was short. We felt it at church when finished the Bach Magnificat on Dec 6 and suddenly we had to prepare for Xmas Eve. And Tday will only be day earlier in ’25. But dhude, ya gotta do Nutcracker at least once!