Sergei Diaghilev’s Paris-based "Ballets Russes” was one of the greatest ballet companies in history.  Diaghilev combined the soul of a brilliant artist with the mind and skills of a shrewd businessman.  Committed to mounting exciting and innovative productions, he sought out the best modern artists and composers available.  Among musicians alone, he worked over the years with Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Prokofiev, and others.  However, he never made a more sensational nor a more fruitful musical discovery than when he engaged a 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky to write the music for Michel Fokine’s new ballet, The Firebird.

Since the end of the 19th century, there had been a great cultural affinity (as well as a political alliance) between Russia and France.  At the same time, the geographical distance and the differences in culture endowed all things Russian with an exotic flavor in the eyes of the French.  

Fokine used several Russian fairy-tales in the scenario of The Firebird.  The stories of the beneficent Firebird and the evil ogre Kashchei the Immortal are combined in an ingenious plot, which Eric Walter White summarized in his standard book on Stravinsky as follows:

A young Prince, Ivan Tsarevich, wanders into Kashchei’s magic garden at night in pursuit of the Firebird, whom he finds fluttering round a tree bearing golden apples.  He captures it and extracts a feather as forfeit before agreeing to let it go.  He then meets a group of thirteen maidens and falls in love with one of them, only to find that she and the other twelve maidens are princesses under the spell of Kashchei.

When dawn comes and the princesses have to return to Kashchei’s palace, he breaks open the gates to follow them inside; but he is captured by Kashschei’s guardian monsters and is about to suffer the usual penalty of petrifaction, when he remembers the magic feather.  He waves it; and at his summons the Firebird appears and reveals to him the secret of Kashchei’s immortality [his soul, in the form of an egg, is preserved in a casket].  Opening the casket, Ivan smashes the vital egg, and the ogre immediately expires. His enchantments dissolve, all the captives are freed, and Ivan and his Tsarevna are betrothed with due solemnity.

Stravinsky derived three orchestral suites from his ballet, in 1911, 1919 and 1945, respectively. The suites are of different lengths and require different orchestral forces.  The 1919 suite was scored for a smaller orchestra and retains only five of the complete ballet’s 19 musical numbers.

The Introduction begins with the rumble of low strings, trombones and bassoons, with the higher-pitched instruments entering gradually as the curtain rises on the first tableau.

The Princesses’ Khorovod (round dance) contains one of the ballet’s great melodies, introduced by the solo oboe in a slow tempo.  The actual dance is slightly faster; the strings and woodwind are joined, after a while, by the first horn.

Kashchei’s Infernal Dance begins with a fast timpani roll, followed by a syncopated motif that arises from the lower registers (bassoons, horn, tuba) and is gradually taken over by the entire orchestra.  There is a lyrical countersubject symbolizing the plight of Kashchei’s prisoners.The Firebird’s Lullaby is a delicate song for solo bassoon, accompanied by harps and muted strings.

The finale, in which everyone celebrates the wedding of Prince Ivan and the princess, contains what is probably the most famous Russian folksong in in the ballet.  This beautiful melody, first played by the first horn (Ivan’s instrument), grows in volume and orchestration until the full orchestra plays it.  Here a significant rhythmic change is introduced: the symmetrical triple meter (3/2) is transformed into an asymmetrical 7/4, bringing the music to its final culmination point.

— Peter Laki