Khachaturian - Waltz, from Masquerade (piano version)

The Incidental music to Masquerade was written in 1941 by Aram Khachaturian for a production of a play of the same name by Russian poet and playwright Mikhail Lermontov. It premiered on 21 June 1941 in the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. It is better known in the form of a five-movement suite. Khachaturian was asked to write music for a production of Masquerade being produced by the director Ruben Simonov. The famous waltz theme in particular gave Khachaturian much trouble in its creation: moved by the words