Igor Stravinsky

Suite from The Firebird (1919)

This piece was chosen by principal viola, Patricia Whaley

Igor Stravinsky was a 20^th-century chameleon—he explored several different musical styles over the course of his nearly one-hundred-year life, from experiments in modernist atonal music to a conservative “neo-Classical” style. Russian by birth, he soared to fame (and scandal) in Paris with his late-Romantic, folk-infused Ballets Russes, which included the infamous Rite of Spring, so avant-garde that it allegedly started a riot at its premiere. Among his earlier successes in Paris was the 1910 ballet The Firebird, a retelling of an ancient folk tale of a young warrior-prince defeating a monstrous sorcerer with the help of a magic bird. The music is immensely evocative and a tour-de-force of orchestration, from the low strings depicting a shadowy forest, to the frenetic xylophone and trombone glissandos of the sorcerer’s wild minions, and finally to the majestic horn call that marks the hero’s victory over evil.

Program Notes written by Nicholas Hersh, music director