#marche slave

Tarah Kayne and Daniel O'Shea performing their free program at the 2016 Skate America and 2016 NHK Trophy. Their music was A Song of India (Rimsky-Korsakov) and Marche Slave (Tchaikovsky).

first of all, what a FUCKING bop

the drama! the desperation! the power! this song is an absolute banger and i will physically fight anyone who disagrees with me (not really tho, everyone’s entitled to their own opinions)

okay so of COURSE I couldn’t pick any recording of this song other than one conducted by leonard bernstein (what would leonard bernstein do?) and i could write a whole different post about this gay icon BUT I DIGRESS

marche slave is SO GOOD. I played it at our spring band concert last year

it starts out with just the low voices very very quietly and very very intensely. the entire piece then builds to the finale, which is very fast and powerful and FUN

one wacky thing about this piece is an insanely long D.S. al Coda- it seriously went back three pages in my music. when we performed it we just didn’t do that and if you’re under a time limit, i think that’s fine :) it certainly worked all right for us

another excellent thing about this song is the 1812 overture!!! tchaikovsky really went and said “you know what would make this song even better? a song i already wrote!”

tchaikovsky is also gay y’all!! music history is very gay. unfortunately tchaikovsky decided to be gay for his nephew, but we can’t do anything about it now 🤷‍♀️ 

i love this song so much y’all, but my favorite part is at 8:25 in the video I linked

Something about the way Leonard Bernstein conducts always lands him in the pieces I remember most vividly.