Host Silas Farley is back with another Hear the Dance episode, devoted to the creation of George Balanchine’s tale of toy romance, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Farley is joined by former Principal Dancers Patricia McBride and Peter Schaufuss, on whom the ballet was created. The Steadfast Tin Soldier was the first ballet Balanchine made on Schaufuss, who danced with the Company for just three short but very formative years; this marked the second ballet for which Mr. B cast McBride as a doll, following 1974’s Coppélia, and she highlights here the differences in performing the two roles. Reunited for the first time after more than 40 years, the pair's recollections of the ballet's 1975 premiere in Saratoga Springs are as fresh as if it were yesterday. (1:06:28) Reading List for The Steadfast Tin Soldier: My Theatre Life by August Bournonville and Patricia McAndrew Letters on Dance and Choreography by August Bournonville and Knud Arne Jurgensen My Dearly Beloved Wife!—Letters from France and Italy, 1841 by August Bournonville, Knud Arne Jurgensen, et al The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography by Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales (Penguin Classics Edition) by Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller by Jackie Wullschlager Dance in Saratoga Springs by Denise Warner Limoli Balanchine’s Ballerinas: Conversations with the Muses by Robert Tracy Dancing Across the Atlantic: USA-Denmark, 1900-2014 by Erik Aschengreen Music: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major (1931) by Igor Stravinsky Jeux d'Enfants, Opp. 22-26, nos. 6, 3, 11, 12 (1871) by Georges Bizet Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, opp. 61 (1842) by Felix Mendelssohn

This week’s edition of City Ballet The Podcast is the premiere broadcast of a live See the Music presentation on the score to Balanchine's Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, recorded on the NYCB stage in 2019. Host and Resident Conductor Clotilde Otrantro walks us through the innovations and themes of Brahms’ original chamber music score, and indicates some of the choices Schoenberg made in the instrumentation for full orchestra in order to maintain the music’s various sombre moods, military vibes, and folk influences. Otranto is joined by the NYCB Orchestra for a number of evocative excerpts, transporting us to the romanticism of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (13:33) Music: Symphony in Three Movements (1945) by Igor Stravinsky Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25 (1861) by Johannes Brahms, arr. by Arnold Schoenberg