Zinman's Nutcracker

 Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake belong to Russia, but The Nutcracker belongs to America. There's no country where The Nutcracker means more than the US, where every parent has to go watch their daughter dance the part of 'little snot #3' in their local production of The Nutcracker, and for some reason, every girl takes ballet here from the time they're four years old until they're nine, then never have anything to do with ballet again until they take their own kids.

The Nutcracker was even considered marginal Tchaikovsky until George Balanchine's New York City Ballet production of the Nutcracker in 1954. Sure, people knew about it, but probably under the name "Shchelkunchik." It was no more important than, say, the Mozartiana Suite. It was only when the New York City Ballet played it every Christmas that it became the ballet among all ballets.

I doubt either Bolshoi or Mariinsky has accumulated the yearly number of performances done by the New York City Ballet in the years since. Here's their orchestra's recording, done for a movie version they did in the early nineties that starred, believe it or not, Macaulay Culkin (the brat in Home Alone). It was conducted by David Zinman, who in the nineties was one of the greatest conductors in the world. If the NYCB orchestra was at all lacking in comparison to major orchestras before facing Zinman, there's no way you can tell here. If you didn't know any better you'd think it was Cleveland under Dohnanyi.

I don't know what the greatest recording is of The Nutcracker, but this is my favorite. You hear everything, you get closer to Tchaikovsky's tempo markings than most any other, you completely feel the rhythmic spring of the dance without tempi so fast that the notes feel scrambled, and there is no lack of passion in the climaxes. It is Tchaikovsky close to the world of his idols: Mozart and Schumann, and shows that at his greatest, Tchaikovsky was fully their equal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3K7k2slTSs&list=PLUtjANhAH1uEfi05xkGKfvc6KHaUs5LGi&index=1&fbclid=IwAR3HAnsw-0GuA1lQxt2spQrwy-WUgNiGZqIdeIfDPQKnP1_Gf7-z5KQzT3Q