cloudbet What Does a Sugar Plum Fairy Sound Like?

Produced by Tina Antolini

Edited by Frannie Carr Toth

Featuring Joshua Barone

In the 1890s, when the Russian composer Tchaikovsky was preparing to write the music for the ballet that would become his holiday classic, “The Nutcracker,” he encountered a brand-new instrument: the celesta. Its glassy, bell-like sound bewitched him. And, as The New York Times’s Joshua Barone reports, the way Tchaikovsky ultimately deployed the instrument in his famous “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” has echoed through musical history.

On today’s episode

Joshua Barone is an assistant classical music editor and a contributing critic at The Times.

jilibetImageCredit...Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAdditional reading

The Revolutionary Sound at the Heart of a Holiday Classic

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