Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Igor Stravinsky composed his first three major ballet scores for large orchestra before the First World War especially for the famous ballet company “Les Ballets russes,” one of the most important dance companies of the 20th century, and its impresario Sergei Diaghilev—and thus his most famous ballets: 1910 L’oiseau de feu (The Firebird), 1911 Petrushka, and 1913 Le sacre du printemps. Two of this trio (The Firebird in its popular version as a ballet suite) can now be heard in a masterful interpretation on a new album from the BR Klassik label, featuring the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its chief conductor, Mariss Jansons. Diaghilev, a defining figure in 20th-century ballet, founded the company “Les Ballets russes” in Paris in 1909, where it initially performed; in 1911, it moved its base to Monte Carlo. The premiere of Stravinsky’s The Firebird took place on June 25, 1910, at the Paris Opéra; that of Le sacre du printemps on May 29, 1913, at the newly built Théâtre des Champs-Élysées—on a day that went down in history as one of the great theatrical scandals of the 20th century because of the protests of the Parisian audience and the scathing reviews from critics, and which finally made Stravinsky famous. Today, his groundbreaking music has established itself internationally and is indispensable in concert programs, even though the music of “Sacre” still sounds as it did a century ago, which is why it so greatly excited and unsettled its contemporaries.