One of the most popular ballets, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) composed SWAN LAKE in 1875-76. Tchaikovsky borrowed from the Russian and German folk tales to tell the of story a princess, Odette who was turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer�s curse. SWAN LAKE premiered on March 4, 1877, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The prima ballerina (Odette/Odile) for the 1877 performance, Anna Sobeshchanskaya, was dissatisfied with the ballet as a whole, and she had requested that a pas de deux be composed and choreographed to replace the pas de six in the third act. After a false start with a pas de deux by composer Ludwig Minkus, an angry Tchaikovsky agreed to compose a pas de deux himself that would permit the ballerina to retain the choreography she enjoyed and learned from the Minkus, believing that only he should be responsible for the music, whether good or bad. This pas de deux was thought to be lost until a copy of the accompanists score was found in the archives of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre in 1953, and George Balanchine choreographed the rediscovered and reconstructed pas de deux for a 1960 performance in New York City. Instrumentation: 2+Picc.2.2.2: 4.4.3.1: Timp.Perc(2-3): Hp: Str (4-4-3-3-3 in set). Reprint edition.