This brief suite for orchestra, composed in 1934, charmingly illustrates 5 tales drawn from the classic Andrew Land and Grimm Brothers fairy tale collections. " The Tinder-Box Soldier " opens with gentle steady dissonant chords backing up toy level military trumpet calls. "The Song of Rapunzel", the princess imprisoned in a tower who "lets down her lovely hair" and is rescued by a prince, is built from a lovely flute solo over mysteriously rolling strings. The 3rd movement, "The Story of a Darning Needle" is a fast "spinning song" with flashes of pointillistic percussion filling in the steady, thin machine rhythms of the strings. "Dance of the Twelve Princesses" is stately and flowing in its delicate lines, which are introduced and re-introduced at various points by a shaking tambourine and a woodwind call; the orchestration becomes richer at the end with the addition of harp and bells to the string section. The final story is "The Ride of Koschei the Deathless", a character who also appears in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera and in Stravinsky's ballet "The Firebird". He rides on a magic horse given him by a witch - the tambours and full percussion with low piano dissonances give us the powerful driving rhythms surrounded by punctuations from the strings and brass.

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