Commissioned by the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, Symphony in Three Movements was first performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Stravinsky, on January 24, 1946. It was Stravinsky’s first major composition after emigrating to the United States, and contains material from other projects he had abandoned.

Stravinsky regarded the work as his “war symphony,” a direct reaction to the events of World War II. He was influenced, he said, by “our arduous time of sharp and shifting events, of despair and hope, of continual torments, of tension and, at last, cessation and relief.” 

The first movement was inspired by a documentary on Japanese scorched earth tactics in China. The piano part derives from an incomplete piano concerto. The second movement consists of unused music for a film version of Franz Werfel’s novel Song of Bernadette, especially a scene for “The Apparition of the Virgin,” with a prominent part for the solo harp. Both solo harp and solo piano appear in the last movement, which was spurred by newsreel footage of goose-stepping soldiers. Stravinsky said the finale was meant to depict “the rise of the Allies after the overturning of the German war machine.”

Stravinsky had second thoughts about the programmatic content of the Symphony. “In spite of what I have said,” he later wrote, “the Symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. That is all. How and in what form the things of this world are impressed upon their music is not for them to say.”

~ Program notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2023