Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

This work makes the earth tremble. That, at any rate, is how it seemed to the audience at the 1913 premiere of "Le Sacre du printemps" in Paris: the musical scandal of the decade. The latest coup from the Ballets Russes and its brilliant impresario Sergei Diaghilev combined an archaic plot, culminating in the sacrificial death of a young girl, with music that eclipsed everything previously imaginable, effectively pulverizing centuries of European music history. The score strips the soul to its skeleton, pierces down to the bone, and cuts to the quick. Igor Stravinsky cares nothing for classical compositional methods; instead, he pieces together disparate elements, layers level upon level, and pushes every single instrument to its absolute limit—achieving with the entire orchestra a sonic power that even today feels like it is flying right at the listener's ears.

When Zubin Mehta, General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1988 to 2006, returned to the podium of the National Theatre Munich the year after his departure, he chose this work for the program—which proved to be a masterstroke. The rapport built up over the years between the great conductor and the top-tier Munich ensemble, based on mutual listening and breathing as one, formed the ideal starting point for this "Rite of Spring": from the harmony of collaborative music-making grew an explosive interpretation of this radical work. Recorded in audiophile quality, this concert recording spent nearly twenty years in the archives and is now, newly remixed and remastered, being released for the first time exclusively on white vinyl in celebration of Zubin Mehta’s 90th birthday.