Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

This famous piece is from the Nutcracker ballet, which premiered in 1892. It was not very popular when it premiered but has become a holiday favorite and one of Tchaikovsky's best known works. He later pulled 8 pieces of music from the ballet for a suite to be performed in a concert setting, and the music became an instant hit. In the ballet, the piece is for a ballerina, and the choreographer wanted Tchaikovsky to make the opening notes sound like water drops. He used a brand new instrument for this effect, the celeste, which is a combination of a glockenspiel and a piano.