Swan Lake

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) wrote his tragic ballet Swan Lake in 1875-76 and it was premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877 with choreography by Julius Reisinger. The ballet was revived in 1895 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Apart from the exquisite choreography, Tchaikovsky’s score for Swan Lake is one of the most dramatic in the history of European classical music. Nikolai Kashkin (1839-1920), Professor of Piano at the Moscow Conservatory, was a prominent champion of the music of Tchaikovsky. His transcription of the entire score of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake for solo piano was published in 1895.

Alexander Jacob obtained his doctorate in Intellectual History from the Pennsylvania State University. His scholarly publications include Nobilitas: A Study of European Aristocratic Philosophy from Ancient Greece to the Early Twentieth Century, University Press of America, 2001, De Naturae Natura: A Study of Idealistic Conceptions of Nature and the Unconscious, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992 (2nd ed. Arktos, Media Ltd., 2011) and The Grail: Two Studies, Manticore Press, 2014. Dr. Jacob holds a Licentiate Diploma in Piano from the Trinity College of Music, London, and has given solo recitals in Canada, Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, England, Brazil and Mexico. He has recorded piano transcriptions of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Parsifal and Lohengrin for Manticore Press.