Tahiti-Trot

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The "Tahiti Trot" is Shostakovich's 1927^[1] orchestration of "Tea for Two" from the musical No, No, Nanette by Vincent Youmans. Shostakovich wrote it in response to a challenge from conductor Nikolai Malko: after the two listened to the song on record, Malko bet 100 roubles that Shostakovich could not completely re-orchestrate the song from memory in under an hour. Shostakovich took him up and won, completing the orchestration in around 45 minutes. The "Tahiti Trot" was first performed in 1928^[2], and has been a popular encore ever since. It was used as an entr'acte for the ballet The Age of Gold at the suggestion of conductor Alexander Gauk^{[citation needed]}.