With Christmas just around the corner, it's nice to see the arrival of yet another recording of everyone's perennial favorite, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. It's a piece of music that's been transcribed for a multitude of instruments and instrumental groups, adapted for TV shows and movies, used as background music for staged productions, and some of its segments are even included in method books for piano courses. So I think it's safe to say that everyone, in one form or another, have been exposed to this famous ballet score. This new recording is the first in Deutsche Grammophon's new partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. He applies generally swift tempos to most of the score and the orchestra's sound is open and clear. For example, one of my favorite scenes, A Pine Forest in Winter has all the majesty it calls for without becoming over melodramatic like some other accounts. The Waltz of the Snowflakes is light and airy, and the Los Angeles Children's Chorus sound as if they are an integral part of the orchestral fabric. The Magic Castle on the Mountain sounds, well, magical and covered in pixie powder. And all of the famous scenes that usually form the 'suite', like the Arabian, Chinese and Russian Dances, the Waltz of the Flowers and the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, all come out sounding fresh and revitalized under Dudamel's delicate, uptempo direction which emphasizes this ballet's "dance" elements perfectly.