Masquerade was written in 1941 by Aram Khachaturian as incidental music for a production of the play of the same name by Russian poet and playwright Mikhail Lermontov. It premiered on 21 June 1941 in the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. The music 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 of the play’s heroine, Nina - “How beautiful the new waltz is! … something between sorrow and joy gripped my heart.” - the composer struggled to “find a theme that I considered beau...