When and where was Stravinsky's ballet suite, which rearranged Pergolesi's work, first performed?

- Russian composer who brote this ballet piece after the 1st World War
- Other compositions The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) used massive symphony orchestras
- After war performances had to be less flamboyant
- Director of Ballet Russes Serge Diaghilec asked Stravinsky to take 18thC composer Pergolesi's work and rearrange it
- Vivo (cello sonata) is by Pergolesi, Sinfonia (Trio Sonata) is actually by Gallo and Gavotta (keyboard piece) is by Monza.
- The suite completed in 1922.
- First performed in 1922 in Boston, USA by Pierre Monteux who championed Stranvinsky's music.
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Represented reaction against overblown emotions and formlessness of late 19thC music.
- Movements in neo-classicism were short - suited ballet
- Structures based of 18thC ritornello, sonata form, variation, rondo, and simple binary and ternary forms
- Harmonies based on originals with added dischords
- Rhythms used influence of jazz (syncapation)
- Used wider variety of instrumentation and techniques than what would have been used in 18thC
This suite is relatively close to 18thC pieces with melodies, structure and basic harmonies kept the same.
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Performance Forces and their Handling
- Original pieces only had a max of 4 players
- Wrote for chamber orchestra of 32 players - what haydn might have used in late 18thC
- Use of solo trombone in vivo not in 18thC piece
- Separate string group in concerto grosso style has 5 solo string players and no continuo - usually 2 violins and cello with harpsichord/organ continuo.
- Double bass part was same as cello in 18thC but in vivo there is virtuoso solo part.
- Adds many articulations like slurs and staccatos less frequently found in 18thC music.

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Pulcinella was premiered on 15th May 1920 by the Ballets Russes at the Opéra in Paris, where it was billed simply as ‘music by Pergolesi, arranged and orchestrated by Igor Stravinsky’. Yet the work subsequently came to be identified more directly with Stravinsky as composer rather than arranger, in part a consequence of the concert suites he made of the score, including the version from 1922 (revised 1949). While Stravinsky later asserted that the ‘remarkable thing about Pulcinella is not how much but how little has been added or changed’, the alterations are significant enough to turn the music instantly into something unmistakably of the 20th century. Stravinsky began by working directly onto the transcriptions Diaghilev had given him, subtly annotating the melodies and bass lines of arias by Pergolesi, trio sonata movements by Gallo, and even a tarantella by Wassenaer. Sometimes the result was just a representation of the original in Stravinsky’s own accent. No-one could mistake the trombone and double-bass melody of the ‘Vivo’ for anything other than Stravinsky, even though every note of Pergolesi’s music is still present. There are cunning harmonic touches, anachronistic pedal points and off-beat accents that reveal the thumbprint of the arranger, but it remains a loving, albeit humorous, homage to Pergolesi. The same is true of the opening ‘Sinfonia’ (original music by Gallo). Elsewhere, however, Stravinsky declares his hand more decisively. In the ‘Serenata’, for instance, he adds an unchanging drone (an open fifth), which denies the music its forward movement and whose resulting dissonances bestow a languid, melancholic air.

A new modern dance adaptation of Stravinsky's neoclassical "Pulcinella" will be presented as the final Grand Valley State University Fall Arts Celebration 2009 event.
The performance, on Monday, October 19, begins at 8 p.m. in the Louis Armstrong Theatre, Performing Arts Center, Allendale Campus. The performance is open to the public with free admission.
Shawn T Bible, Grand Valley assistant professor of dance, reinvents the classical characteristics in the traditional ballet. He believes that Stravinsky would probably be amused, since his own version of the ballet was a masterful reworking of the music of Pergolesi, an early classical composer of comic operas in Naples during the mid 1700s.
"The music was written by Stravinsky with the narrative in mind," said Bible. "The ballet will maintain its structure, characters and plot, while presenting the audience with a refreshing perspective on a classic and stronger gestural movement vocabulary that lends itself to modern dance."
Pulcinella is a character originating from commedia dell'arte. Scored for a modern chamber orchestra with soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists, the ballet was first commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered in Paris in 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Leonid Myasin (Léonide Massine) created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets.
The ballet unfolds in one single act and features Pulcinella, his girlfriend Pimpinella, and a cast of interesting characters involved in the pursuits of love. It also recognized WWI in a heavy way, though the story is funny with many high-jinks, and is intended as an escapist experience.
'Pulcinella' was most often performed as orchestral suites and not danced. This performance will be a collaboration between faculty and students, conducted by Henry Duitman, choreographed by Shawn T Bible, and danced by a splendid cast of Grand Valley dance faculty, the student Dance Ensemble, and guest dancers.
For more information, contact Shawn T Bible, assistant professor of dance in Grand Valley's Department of Music, at email@example.com or (616) 331-3487.

Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite is the highlight in a vibrant concert to showcase the 2018 SSO Fellows.
The SSO Fellows are talented young musicians on the cusp of an orchestral career, and by October they’re reaching the culmination of a year of mentoring and professional experience. To showcase their talents, Fellowship Artistic Director Roger Benedict has devised an appealing French-flavoured concert with a neoclassical theme.
Poulenc’s Suite française was written for a play set in the royal court of 16th-century France and he gives a chic twist to antique dances from the time. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, commissioned for the Ballets Russes as a tribute to commedia dell’arte, does the same thing: cunningly reworking music from the 18th century and infusing it with modern genius. In between these delightful pieces, Australian mezzo-soprano Caitlin Hulcup will join the Fellows to perform Ravel’s intoxicating songs based on poems by the symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé.

Colorful and traditional are a rare yet beautiful combination, which led me to choose Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite as the musical pairing. This piece is neoclassicism at its finest. The work was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, who was the founder of the Ballet Russes and one of the primary influences behind Stravinsky’s ballet repertoire. Diaghilev wanted a ballet inspired by commedia dell’arte, and Stravinsky was naturally tasked with creating the musical score…while the costumes and set were designed by none other than Pablo Picasso! The ballet is based around Pulcinella (pictured right), who was a classic character of the commedia dell’arte genre. Stravinsky revised the original music (believed to have been written by 18th-century composer Giovanni Pergolesi) by incorporating contemporary harmonies and rhythms and by scoring it for a sizable chamber orchestra. He says the following of the piece:
“Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course—the first of many love affairs in that direction—but it was a look in the mirror, too.”
The ballet was premiered for a Parisian audience in May 1920. 2 years later, Stravinsky abridged the ballet into a “Suite” for chamber orchestra, which uses 11 of the original 18 movements – the work has since become a standard of the orchestral canon. Like the above dish, Pulcinella is by far one of my favorites – the colors and characters are truly unparalleled, and I hope you enjoy it!

2 in B flat Major (Allegro moderato) was among the works that formed the basis for Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Tarantella, based on works considered at the time to be by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.
Apart from Concerti Armonici, three sonatas for recorder and continuo also were discovered in the early 1990s.
- Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692–1766). A master unmasked, or the Pergolesi-Ricciotti puzzle solved. By Albert Dunning. Tr. by Joan Rimmer. Frits Knuf, 1980.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer.|

Rather like the other classical CDs this week, we suspect that because we like this, purists may well have something to harp on about. Suzuki is an expert on Bach — he is recording the complete choral works of Bach, as well as Bach’s concertos, orchestral suites, and solo works for harpsichord and organ — so perhaps he’s turned to Stravinsky for some light relief.
The opening piece is The Pulcinella Suite, from a ballet and based on an 18th-century play — Pulcinella is who we call Punch. It’s a lively and jolly piece, with the Vivo being even comical.
The longest work is Apollo, also from a ballet, which centres on Apollo, the Greek god of music, who is visited by the Muses Terpsichore, Polyhymnia and Calliope. It is a calm and serene piece, and apparently was first performed with monochrome costumes for the dancers and no elaborate scenery.
After the serene ballet, the closing piece Concerto in D is livelier, making this an enjoyable collection of music. Its easiness on the ear perhaps makes its lack of edge a downer for purists but if you don’t want to work hard for your music, it’s enjoyable. Which is what it’s supposed to be….
Out on BIS, 2211, and it’s a SACD.

Diaghilev also worked with dancer and ballet master Léonide Massine.
The artistic director for the Ballets Russes was Léon Bakst. Together they developed a more complicated form of ballet with show-elements intended to appeal to the general public, rather than solely the aristocracy. The exotic appeal of the Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist painters and the nascent Art Deco style.
Perhaps Diaghilev's most notable composer-collaborator, however, was Igor Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some pieces by Chopin for the Ballets Russes. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed shortly afterwards, and the two also worked together on Les noces (1923) and Pulcinella (1920) together with Picasso, who designed the costumes and the set.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev stayed abroad. The new Soviet regime, once it became obvious that he could not be lured back, condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence. Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years.
Diaghilev staged Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921; it was a production of remarkable magnificence in both settings and costumes but, despite being well received by the public, it was a financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald Stoll, the theatre-owner who had backed it. The first cast included the legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtseva and Lubov Egorova in the role of Aurora. Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess. When asked why, he quipped, "Because I have no beauties!" The later years of the Ballets Russes were often considered too "intellectual", too "stylish" and seldom had the unconditional success of the first few seasons, although younger choreographers like George Balanchine hit their stride with the Ballet Russes.

Diaghilev also worked with dancer and ballet master Léonide Massine.
The artistic director for the Ballets Russes was Léon Bakst. Together they developed a more complicated form of ballet with show-elements intended to appeal to the general public, rather than solely the aristocracy. The exotic appeal of the Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist painters and the nascent Art Deco style. Coco Chanel is said to have stated that "Diaghilev invented Russia for foreigners." [Rhonda K. Garelick].
Perhaps Diaghilev's most notable composer-collaborator, however, was Igor Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some pieces by Chopin for the Ballets Russes. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed shortly afterwards, and the two also worked together on Les noces (1923) and Pulcinella (1920) together with Picasso, who designed the costumes and the set.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev stayed abroad. The new Soviet regime, once it became obvious that he could not be lured back, condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence. Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years.
Diaghilev made Boris Kochno his secretary in 1920 and staged Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921; it was a production of remarkable magnificence in both settings and costumes but, despite being well received by the public, it was a financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald Stoll, the theatre-owner who had backed it. The first cast included the legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtseva and Lubov Egorova in the role of Aurora. Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess. When asked why, he quipped, "Because I have no beauties!"

About this Piece
If Stravinsky was known at all in Paris in 1908, it was as a promising student and disciple of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In that year, two of the 26-year-old composer's works were conducted by Alexander Siloti in St. Petersburg: Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks. Hardly earth-shakers by the lights of what was to come, but sufficiently original and imaginative to make an impression on at least one connoisseur in the audience, Sergei Diaghilev, who was about to launch a new company to perform a mixed season of ballet and opera in Paris. The French capital was at the time particularly taken with the kind of exotic orientalia Russian artists were likely to offer.
With dancer-choreographer Mikhail Fokine and scenic artists Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois on board, Diaghilev lacked only a resident composer to round out his creative staff. That Stravinsky was his man was proven by his successful handling of some test assignments for the opening season of what would be called the Ballets Russes, including the orchestration of Chopin's piano Nocturne in A-flat and Valse brillante in E-flat, for the opening and closing numbers of Fokine's Les Sylphides.
During the company's second season, in 1909, Diaghilev gave his potential resident composer something more demanding. When Anatol Liadov was unable to make much progress on a score commissioned from him for a ballet on the Russian legend of the magical Firebird and the Tsarevich Ivan, Diaghilev transferred the project to Stravinsky, who was at the time living in the country home, near St. Petersburg, of the Rimsky-Korsakov family at the invitation of the late composer's son, Andrei.
The lavish production of L'oiseau de feu, as it was called, was first seen in the Paris Opera on June 25, 1910. Choreography was by Fokine, who also danced the role of the Tsarevich. The Firebird was Tamara Karsavina and the conductor Gabriel Pierné, himself a well-known composer at the time.
The colorfully melodic score made an overnight star of the composer who would scandalize even the most progressive Paris audience three years later with his Rite of Spring.

He participated as designer in productions of the Ballets Russes from its beginning in 1909 until 1921, creating sets and costumes for Scheherazade (1910, music by Rimsky-Korsakov), The Firebird (1910, music by Stravinsky), Le Spectre de la rose (1911, music by Weber), L'Après-midi d'une faune (1912, music by Debussy), and Daphnis et Chloé (1912, music by Ravel), among other productions.
In 1917, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) designed sets and costumes in the Cubist style for three Diaghilev ballets, all with choreography by Léonide Massine: Parade (1917, music by Erik Satie); El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) (1919, music by Manuel de Falla); and Pulcinella (1920, music by Igor Stravinsky).
Natalia Goncharova was born in 1881 near Tula, Russia. Her art was inspired by Russian folk art, fauvism, and cubism. She began designing for the Ballets Russes in 1921.
Although the Ballets Russes firmly established the 20th-century tradition of fine art theatre design, the company was not unique in its employment of fine artists. For instance, Savva Mamontov's Private Opera Company had made a policy of employing fine artists, such as Korovin and Golovin, who went on to work for the Ballets Russes.
The composers and conductors
The impresario also engaged conductors who were or became eminent in their field during the 20th century, including Pierre Monteux (1911–16 and 1924), Ernest Ansermet (1915–23), Edward Clark (1919-20) and Roger Désormière (1925–29).
Diaghilev had hired the young Stravinsky at a time when he was virtually unknown to compose the music for The Firebird, after the composer Anatoly Lyadov proved unreliable. Diaghilev was instrumental in launching Stravinsky's career in Europe and the United States of America.
Stravinsky's early ballet scores were the subject of much discussion.

Stravinsky and Glazunov conduct their own Ballet music
"Stravinsky’s performance is filled with passion and considerable dramatic understanding ... The performance we have here of [Glazunov's] own music is masterful" - Fanfare
This release presents music from three Russian ballets premièred
within the first two decades of the 20th Century, which reflect the
enormous stylistic changes going on in music during the period. Igor
Stravinsky began as an admirer of Glazunov, but soon set out on his own
course with The Firebird in 1910. The following year saw the première of Petrushka, a work which the conservative elder composer characterized as “not music, but […] excellently and skillfully orchestrated.”
Stravinsky made some never-published acoustic piano sides for the Brunswick label while on tour in America in 1925, but the present suite from Petrushka was his first issued recording. Although the ballet had, by that time, been recorded twice complete on eight sides by HMV (acoustically by Goossens, electrically by Coates, the latter on Pristine PASC 304), Columbia opted to record only a suite on six sides. Missing from this version were the “Dance of the Ballerina” and most of the “Waltz: The Ballerina and the Moor” in Scene III, and “The Peasant and the Bear” (except for the opening bars) and “The Jovial Merchant with Two Gypsy Girls” in Scene IV. Like other concert versions of the ballet, it ends with “The Masqueraders”, rather than with Petrushka’s fight, death, and ghostly reappearance.
After this recording made in London, the focus of Stravinsky’s microphonic activities shifted for the next few years to Paris. At the tail end of his 1928 Firebird Suite sessions (Pristine PASC 387), he recorded the last three selections from the suite to Pulcinella, his ballet for orchestra and singers based on works by Pergolesi, which had marked the beginning of Stravinsky’s neoclassical period. Four years later, he returned to the work and recorded two more movements, but did not record any further excerpts during the 78 rpm era.

From 1891 onwards when French ships sailed into the Russian naval base at Fromstadt to be greeted by a chorus of “La Marseillaise”, there had been a special bond between Russia and France. The Russian impresario, Diaghilev, retreated to Paris when he fell out with Tsar Alexander III. There was already a relationship between Russian and French music with Debussy visiting Russia to teach in 1881 and Ravel taking inspiration from Rimsky-Korsakov.
Stravinsky headed out to Paris and, with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, wowed the French with “The Firebird” in 1910. After the success of “Petrushka”, one night in 1910 Igor dreamed of a young girl dancing herself to death (as you do). He began to plan The Rite of Spring, plotting out a sequence of historically accurate springtime rituals from folk lore and song. He piled these pieces up, short sections one after the other with much rhythmic angularity. In Alex Ross’s brilliant “The Rest Is Noise” book, he compares it with Bo Diddley’s jungle beat. When Charlie “Bird” Parker hit Paris in 1949, he worked the first few notes of the Rite into his solo on “Salt Peanuts.” A few years later, Bird spotted Stravinsky in Birdland in New York and worked the “Firebird” riff into his song “Koko”. Unwittingly or otherwise Stravinsky had hit a connection with black American jazz musicians.
It seems that the legendary chaos around the ballet premiere of “Rites” has grown in notoriety. It has attained the reputation as a near riot, similar to that when the Jesus and Mary Chain played the North London Polytechnic. There was a ruckus and people were ejected but the band played on. Some critics were shocked, others thrilled.
It didn’t stop Stravinsky though and he cracked on with ripping up the rule book.
If anyone fancies a fun dramatisation of the era, this is a recent BBC4 documentary that’s worth a look:
So to the gig.
The Orchestra were a mixture of experienced and youthful musicians. The violinist who was sat opposite us was probably still looking forward to being able to vote.
The first half of the concert was a performance of “Petrushka”.

Three emblematic ballets, a triptych ‘From Russia with Love’ by Igor Stravinsky comes to the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera in Athens.
Stravinsky became known worldwide through a series of ballets for which he composed the music. They were the fruits of his creative cooperation with impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had created the ‘Ballets Russes’ in Paris in collaboration with some of the most talented Russian artists who lived and worked far from their homeland.
It was for this ensemble that the triptych of ballets ‘From Russia With Love’ was written: ‘Le Sacre du printemps’ [The Rite of spring, 1913], ‘Le Chant du Rossignol’ [The nightingale’s song, 1914 / 1917 / 1920] and ‘Les noces’ [The wedding, 1923].
In this Greek production, choreography is provided by three renowned dancers and choreographers including, Daphnis Kokkinos of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, distinguished German choreographer Marco Goecke of Hannover Ballet and Konstantinos Rigos, ballet director of the Greek National Opera.
ABOUT THE VENUE
The Stavros Niarchos Hall is the main auditorium of the opera wing found inside the SNFCC complex. Designed by the acclaimed Renzo Piano, it comprises of 1400 seats with outstanding acoustics designed to stage traditional operas and ballets. It became the new home of the Greek National Opera in 2017.
Find more events on in Athens.

1919
Premiere: 25 June, 1910; Paris
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, xylophone) harp, celeste, piano, strings
Approximate Duration: 22 minutes
With his ballet The Firebird, the 28-year-old Igor Stravinsky found immediate and lasting fame. (“I was once addressed by a man in an American railway dining car, and quite seriously, as ‘Mr. Fireberg,’” a much older Stravinsky related.) Composed between November 1909 and May 1910, the ballet was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 25 June 1910. Gabriel Pierné conducted. The next day, the composer was a celebrity. How did this “overnight” popularity come about?
In 1906, the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev had taken a major exhibition of Russian art to the Petit Palais in Paris. The following year, he presented five concerts of Russian music in the city, and in 1908 mounted a production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, starring Feodor Chaliapin, at the Opéra. This led to an invitation to return the following year with ballet as well as opera, and thus to the launching of his famous Ballets Russes. The company’s first night, 19 May 1909, was a sensation.
For the 1910 season, Diaghilev wanted to present a ballet based on the Russian legend of the Firebird. Unable to convince various composers – including Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alatole Liadov, Alexander Glazunov, and Nikolai Sokolov – to provide a score, the impresario finally turned to the wet-behind-the ears Stravinsky. Diaghilev had first heard Stravinsky’s music two years earlier at a concert in St. Petersburg, immediately asking the young composer to help orchestrate music for the 1909 Parisian ballet season. Thus, Stravinsky was in the right place at the right time.

…knocks you out with the sheer beauty,
power and modernity of its dancing.”
– The Chicago Sun Times
March 19, 2013
Providence Performing Arts Center
Celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of most magnificent dance and music masterpieces ever: “The Rite of Spring”, performed by the Joffrey Ballet.
Sparking a riot that gave birth to modern music and dance, the original Stravinsky and Nijinsky production premiered in Paris in 1913 and forever changed the way audiences hear and see.
The Joffrey Ballet has been hailed as “America’s Ballet Company of Firsts”. Forty-six of their superb dancers will perform “The Rite of Spring”, paired with thrilling contemporary works by two of the best choreographic minds of the 21st century. Don’t miss the first dance company to perform at the White House at Jacqueline Kennedy’s invitation, the first American company to visit Russia, the first to commission a rock ‘n roll ballet and the only dance company to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. .

Even though Balanchine's choreography was produced by Diaghilev in Paris in June 1928, Stravinsky's composition premiered six weeks earlier at the Library of Congress with choreography by Adolph Bolm. The events surrounding this premiere are telling.
In 1925 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge created a festival to promote modern music and cultural awareness in America. An idealist, she maintained that public exposure to good new music was essential to a powerful society, and her aim was to build an auditorium for the Library of Congress to support these goals.
Mrs. Coolidge donated $60,000 to the Library to build the theater and develop the project. She established an annual chamber music festival and commissioned her favorite international composers to create original works. For the third season in 1928, Coolidge determined that she wanted to plan a program with dance as a central focus, and she requested that Carl Engel, chief of the Music Division, contact Adolph Bolm to be choreographer.
Two composers, de Falla and Ottorino Respighi, declined the commission, and in 1927 Coolidge contacted Stravinsky to compose a chamber ballet that would be performed at the festival. She set many parameters, requiring that the chamber ballet be 30 minutes in length and employ no more than six dancers and a modest orchestration so that the work would be accommodated on the Coolidge Auditorium's small stage. For this commission, Stravinsky created "Apollon Musagète" with choreography by Bolm. Nicholas Remisoff designed the costumes and scenery, and the dancers included Bolm as Apollo, and Ruth Page, Elise Reiman and Berenice Holmes as the Muses. This ballet was announced as "the first time in history a major ballet work had its world premiere in America."
Nonetheless, Bolm's "Apollo" was beset with difficulties, ranging from Stravinsky's cavalier and egocentric treatment of the project to the limitations of the stage size and the small audience capacity. In fact, Stravinsky barely refers to Bolm's version of "Apollo" in any of his memoirs.
Charles M. Joseph, author of "Stravinsky Inside Out," states that according to some of Stravinsky's unpublished correspondence, he may have doubted Bolm's choreographic capabilities and convictions in the late 1920s.

The Rite of Spring - The 100-Year-Shock Wave
Tonight at 7, it’s “The Rite of Spring – The 100-Year-Shock-Wave.” It was 100 years ago today that the ballet “The Rite of Spring” had its premiere in Paris. This special features first-hand recollections from composer Stravinsky, conductor Pierre Monteux and by major artists of today. Lengthy excerpts are conducted by Valery Gergiev.
STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring (Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra/ Valery Gergiev)
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is still provocative and disturbing a centenary (May 29) after its
premiere caused one of the most sensational scandals in artistic history. In this anniversary
documentary, the ballet’s 100 year shock-wave is traced from its initial explosion on May 29th
1913 right up to the present time. First-hand recollections of the famous first night from Dame
Marie Rambert, who was one of the dancers, and Igor Stravinsky, who was in the audience, lead
through to comments on the work’s enduring power from performers of today – dancer Dame
Monica Mason, Dancer Deborah Bull, choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot and conductors
Valery Gergiev, the late Sir Colin Davis and Bernard Keeffe – as well as dance re-constructionist
Millicent Hodson and musicologist and historian Geoffrey Norris.
Stravinsky was a young, virtually unknown composer when Serge Diaghilev recruited him to
create works for the Ballets Russes. The Rite of Spring, with revolutionary choreography by
Vaslav Nijinsky, was the third such project, after the acclaimed The Firebird in 1910 and
Petrushka in 1911. His score contained many features that were novel for its time, including
experiments in tonality, rhythm, metre, stress and dissonance. Analysts have noted a significant
grounding in Russian folk music, a relationship which Stravinsky tended to deny. The music has
influenced many of the 20th century’s leading composers and is one of the most recorded works
in the classical repertoire today.

STRAVINSKY The Firebird (original ballet)
STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version)
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring
Sir Simon Rattle conductor
London Symphony Orchestra
Tickets: for more information and tickets please visit the Philharmonie de Paris website.
Sir Simon Rattle continues the 2017/18 season opening celebrations by taking the Orchestra on tour to the Philharmonie in Paris, where the LSO is a frequent visitor.
Stravinsky sent shockwaves through classical music in the 20th century. His first three ballets – The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, all composed between 1911 and 1913 – brought a new and frenzied sense of rhythm, so distressing to audiences that it caused uproar; The Rite of Spring even caused a riot.
And it’s not hard to see why. Is there any moment in music more demonic than the opening to The Firebird, a terrifying rumble of strings that would make Jaws tremble? There are few pieces more unsettling than The Rite of Spring with its carnal, tribal rhythms; or Petrushka with its impish Punch and Judy puppets. Sir Simon Rattle brings these three creations to life in this dramatic programme.

In terms of his influence and the frequency with which his works are performed, Stravinsky stands preeminent among twentieth-century composers. His oeuvre encompasses nearly every significant trend of his lifetime, and regardless of genre, the Russian composer frequently returned to the musical idiom of his native land. In Petrushka,
he drew upon his roots to dazzle Parisian audiences of the Ballets Russes with a score that Debussy praised as "sonorous magic."
Containing all of the music from the original 1911 version, this edition presents Stravinsky's popular ballet in a reduction for solo piano. Suitable for rehearsal or performance, this version is ideal for listeners wishing to examine the inner workings of one of the twentieth century's greatest masterpieces. Translated stage directions provide helpful guidance and narrate the exotic story of three magical puppets.
Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by G. Schirmer, n.d.
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The Joffrey Ballet Resurrects The Rite of Spring
"[The Rite of Spring] is an astonishing ballet, no less so today than in 1913. Nijinsky's genius as a choreographer bursts forth here in the originality of his vision, the depth of his musicality and the grand sense of inevitability that reigns over the whole. Inspired by Roerich, a specialist in the primitive iconography of pagan Russia, Nijinsky created a movement style that would embody both the logic and the frenzy of Stravinsky's music."
-- Newsweek November 16, 1987
When Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes premiered The Rite of Spring, or Le Sacre du printemps (Sacre), at Paris's Theatre des Champs-Elysees on May 29, 1913, a riot broke out. The score by Igor Stravinsky was a panoply of shifting syncopations and dissonant harmonies, while the choreography by famed danseur Vaslav Nijinsky curled the dancers' bodies inward as they jerkily stamped and jumped across the stage. Archaeologist and painter Nicholas Roerich contributed the set design and the costumes, which were described in a 2002 Ballet Magazine article as "heavy smocks, handpainted with [primitive] symbols of circles and squares." The pre-Modernist audience, accustomed to the demure grace of classical ballet, was further outraged by the graphic nature of the ballet's story--the pagan sacrifice of a virgin by her village to usher in spring. Nijinsky's ballet was performed only seven more times--in Paris and London-- before disappearing from the classical repertoire for reasons including Nijinsky's mental breakdown and the deterioration of his relationship with Diaghilev. Many new iterations of the ballet were choreographed--including versions by Pina Bausch and Martha Graham--but only the score remained intact from the initial performances. In FY 1987, the Joffrey Ballet received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant in Dance of $243,400 "to support three self-produced seasons in New York City and Los Angeles, and the reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps."

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This release is the final installment in a trio of discs that celebrate the music of Stravinsky in Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Thierry Fischer.
This live orchestral recording brings together two contrasting works both composed for the famed ballet company: Stravinsky’s infamous The Rite of Spring – full of dark, rhythmic menace and dissonance – and Poulenc’s Les biches (most aptly translated as ‘the does’) – which captures the heady atmosphere and risqué thrills of young women in the 1920s' party scene.
Poulenc: Les Biches
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

One of the biggest scandals in the history of music stirred Paris as the Ballets Russes created the new ballet by Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky, 'The Rite of Spring', conducted by Pierre Monteux. To celebrate this anniversary, François- Xavier Roth, with special permission from Boosey & Hawkes and with the assistance of musicologist Louis Cyr, have endeavored to restore the 'Rite' as it was given on the evening of May 29 1913.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK 'As heard at the scandalous 1913 world première is the gist of Roth s claims for this first period-instrument recording of The Rite with special permission from Boosey & Hawkes, which usually only authorises performances of Stravinsky s 1967 edition. It s certainly hard to imagine the first performance, under Pierre Monteux, being as well played as this, as Les Siècles follow up their revelatory account of the complete Firebird score. The sound of their French-made turn-of-the-century (mostly 1880s to 1920s) instruments throws fresh light on these modern masterpieces: a tuba, two-thirds the size of modern ones, by Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone; and wonderful Buffet Crampon clarinets and bassoons. The Rite s famous bassoon solo is played without the octave key invented to make this very music less difficult to play. One can t listen with 1913 ears, of course, but there s a palpable sense of freshness with more astringent gut strings that convey the abrasiveness of Stravinsky s writing better than their modern metal equivalents. It s not clear from the notes whether the piano soloist in Petrushka is using an Erard or a Pleyel, but the sound is luminous and transparent, and Roth effortlessly evokes the eeriness of the puppet s ghostly apparition at the close.' --Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times 15 June 2014
ORCHESTRAL CHOICE ***** Performance/ ***** Recording 'a chance to hear the Rite close to how Stravinsky originally conceived it for its 1913 premiere in Paris … an exciting visceral performance of The Rite of Spring, culminating in a ferocious final dance.'

The extreme difficulty of the music demanded an augmented orchestra and the radical choreography required over a hundred rehearsals, which could not be accommodated as scheduled in the 1912 season. Instead, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe was presented, fulfilling audience expectations with a mythic story, orthodox dancing and one of the most ravishing scores ever written. Anticipations for the delayed premiere of The Rite continued to rise. At last the fateful night of May 29, 1913 arrived.
The first two minutes apparently went well, with the audience enthralled by the haunting introduction. But then, the astringent brutality of the first scene broke through as, in Stravinsky's words: the curtain rose on a group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down. The subject itself was scandalous: instead of the fanciful amorous stuff of fluffy ballet dreams, ugly pagans sacrifice a maiden to propitiate the gods of spring. The choreography, costumes and sets boldly dispensed with grace and beauty to emphasize awkward, primitive starkness. At first there were a few boos and catcalls, but then a storm broke as the outraged audience reacted by yelling and fighting. Diaghilev tried to quell the disturbance by switching the house lights on and off while Nijinski tried to sustain the performance as best he could by shouting out numbers and cues to the dancers, who couldn't hear the music, loud as it was, over the din. Stravinsky was furious and stormed out of the theater before police arrived to end the show.
But as happens so often in art, the scandals of the past generate the foundations of the future. Indeed, the very next year Monteux introduced the score in concert and its appeal began to take hold. By 1929, the staid New York Times proclaimed the significance of The Rite to the twentieth century as Beethoven's Ninth is to the nineteenth. The arrival of The Rite in the pantheon of pop culture was clinched in 1940 when it was used in Walt Disney's Fantasia. At first Stravinsky resisted but ultimately accepted $5,000 for the film rights after being warned that if he didn't consent Disney simply would appropriate the score anyway due to copyright enforcement problems.

In Paris on 29 May 1913 The Rite of Spring appeared and shook the ballet world.
Nijinsky’s choreography changed the way the ballet was seen until that moment and paved the way for the modern ballet.
Suddenly the human bodies weren’t elegant but heavy and vulnerable battling against the forces of nature.
At the same time Stravinsky’s music wasn’t gentle but more like if a tornado was raving around.
Critics and the audience raged both against the music and the choreography.
However ,100years afterwards the Rite of Spring is one of the most choreographed scores.
Morissa Fenley, Pina Bausch, Maurice Bejart and many others have tried to choreograph the Rite.
Basil Twist,a puppeteer,also tried.But instead of dancers he used silk,paper and smoke.

Urging Prokofiev to write "music that was national in character", Diaghilev then commissioned the ballet Chout (The Fool, the original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего (Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshavo), meaning "The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons"). Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape it into a ballet scenario. Prokofiev's inexperience with ballet led him to revise the work extensively in the 1920s, following Diaghilev's detailed critique, prior to its first production. The ballet's premiere in Paris on 17 May 1921 was a huge success and was greeted with great admiration by an audience that included Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Stravinsky called the ballet "the single piece of modern music he could listen to with pleasure," while Ravel called it "a work of genius."
First World War and Revolution
During World War I, Prokofiev returned to the Conservatory and studied organ to avoid conscription. He composed The Gambler based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, but rehearsals were plagued by problems, and the scheduled 1917 première had to be cancelled because of the February Revolution. In the summer of that year, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the Classical. It was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time. It is more or less Classical in style but incorporates more modern musical elements (see Neoclassicism). The symphony was also an exact contemporary of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was scheduled to premiere in November 1917.

“I have been very fortunate and professionally blessed to have five wonderful woodwind colleagues at Arizona State University: Elizabeth Buck, flute; Christopher Creviston, saxophone; Joshua Gardner, clarinet; Martin Schuring, oboe; and, Robert Spring, clarinet. Together, we presented numerous woodwind recitals featuring all six of us in various combinations of duos, trios, quartets, and quintets. However, until now, we were never able to share the stage simultaneously. To remedy this, I arranged five movements of Stravinsky’s Suite No. 1 and Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra for the instrumentation of the ASU woodwind faculty.
The source material is derived from Igor Stravinsky’s Three Easy Pieces (1915) and Five Easy Pieces (1917). These compositions were written as four-hand piano educational pieces for Stravinsky’s children. Stravinsky would play the more difficult accompaniments while his children played the simple melodies.
Stravinsky composed arrangements of several movements using these short eight pieces, but the best-known arrangements are Suite No. 1 (1921) and Suite No. 2 (1925) for Small Orchestra. The five dance movements in Suite for Woodwind Sextet are “true Stravinsky” in their wit, charm, and humor. “

I would also like to highlight some further historical notes, relevant to these first five performances in Paris in 1913, which were followed by three performances in London in the same year, before Serge Diaghilev withdrew the work from the repertory of Les Ballets Russes, citing its unpopularity with audiences. It was only in 1987 that Nijinsky’s "Rite of Spring", became a subject of discussion and interest again. This re-awakening of interest was stimulated by the collaboration between Robert Joffrey (founder of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago) the choreographer and dance historian, Millicent Hodson, and the British art historian, Kenneth Archer, and their research into the original ‘Rite’ which led them to stage their ‘reconstituted’ version of "Rite" in its ‘original’ version.
It is important to note that, given the fact that Nijinsky did not annotate his choreography, the research work of Hodson and Archer was based on other sources: sketches, photographs, memories, the annotated score of Stravinsky himself, as well as another annotated by Marie Rambert, who was the assistant to Nijinsky, on the creation of ‘Sacre’ which showed some movement markings, and a letter of my aunt, Bronislava Nijinska, relating to the final dance of « the Chosen One », etc. If one looks back at the critics’ assessment of this ‘re-staging” it was not without considerable amazement that the public rediscovered this mythic work.
Vaslav Nijinsky’s successors, at the time, my sister Kyra (1914-1998) and myself, never contested the scientific value of the work of Hodson and Archer – in fact, on the contrary, we were overjoyed that historians and researchers were breathing new life into the work of our Father.
Now for the past 25 years, The Rite of Spring by Vaslav Nijinsky, or ‘after Nijinsky’ as reconstituted by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer has been seen throughout the world, and has entered into the repertory of more than 10 top dance companies, including the Mariinsky Theatre of St Petersburg, which will bring this production under Maestro Gergiev, to the Theatre des Champs Elysees.

In 1908, Diaghilev returned to the Paris Opéra with six performances of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, starring basso Fyodor Chaliapin. This was Rimsky-Korsakov's 1908 version (with additional cuts and re-arrangement of the scenes). The performances were a sensation, though the costs of producing grand opera were crippling.
Paris Debut: 1909
In 1909, Diaghilev presented his first Paris "Saison Russe" devoted exclusively to ballet (although the company did not use the name "Ballets Russes" until the following year). Most of this original company were resident performers at the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg, hired by Diaghilev to perform in Paris during the Imperial Ballet's summer holidays. The first season's repertory featured a variety of works chiefly choreographed by Michel Fokine, including Le Pavillon d'Armide (music by Tcherepnin), the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor (music by Borodin), Les Sylphides (music by Chopin), and Cléopâtre (music by Arensky). The season also included Le Festin, a pastiche set by several choreographers (including Fokine) to music by several Russian composers.
The Ballets Russes was noted for the high standard of its dancers, most of whom had been classically trained at the great Imperial schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Their high technical standards contributed a great deal to the company's success in Paris, where dance technique had declined markedly since the 1830s.
Principal female dancers included: Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spessivtseva, Mathilde Kschessinska, Ida Rubinstein, Bronislava Nijinska, Lydia Lopokova, Diana Gould and Alicia Markova, among others; many earned international renown with the company.
The Ballets Russes was even more remarkable for raising the status of the male dancer, largely ignored by choreographers and ballet audiences since the early 19th century.

The Firebird was a tremendous success. Stravinsky relates: “The first-night audience at the Paris Opéra glittered indeed … I sat in Diaghilev’s box, where, at intermissions, a stream of celebrities, artists, dowagers, aged Egerias of the Ballet, writers, balletomanes, appeared. I met Proust, Firardoux, Paul Morand, St. John Perse, Paul Claudel, Sarah Bernhardt… I was called to the stage to bow at the conclusion, and was recalled several times. I was still onstage when the final curtain had come down, and I saw coming toward me Diaghilev and a dark man with a double forehead whom he introduced as Claude Debussy. The composer spoke kindly about the music, ending his words with an invitation to dine with him.”
Over the years, Stravinsky fashioned three suites from the ballet: in 1911, 1919, and 1945. The latter two reduce the instrumentation of the original ballet, which Stravinsky had called “wastefully large.” A master of orchestral writing, Stravinsky trimmed the number of players without diminishing the music’s bold audacity. “For me, he wrote, the most striking effect in The Firebird was the natural-harmonic string glissando near the beginning, which the bass chord touches off like a Catherine wheel. I was delighted to have discovered this, and I remember my excitement in demonstrating it to [my teacher Rimsky-Korsakov’s] violinist and cellist sons. I remember, too, Richard Strauss’s astonishment when he heard it two years later in Berlin.”
In all its various versions, Stravinsky’s score for The Firebird blends rich harmonies, the vigor of Russian folk music, and the orchestral magic he learned from Rimsky-Kosakov – conjuring music of tremendous power and beauty.
Synopsis of the complete ballet
The ballet centers on the journey of Prince Ivan Tsarevich, the hero of many fables in Russian folklore. While hunting in the forest, he strays into the magic garden of King Kastchei, a green-taloned ogre and sorcerer. Kastchei’s immortality is preserved by keeping his soul in a magic egg hidden in a casket. In the garden, Ivan spies the Firebird, a magnificent creature covered in scarlet plumage.

67 (1900)
Symphony Orchestra ∙ Alexander Glazunov
Recorded 10, 13 & 14 June 1929 in the Portman Rooms, London
Matrix nos.: WAX 5009/10, 5014/6 & 5022/4
First issued on Columbia LX 16/8 & 29/30
It finds Stravinsky in striking form, leading musicians who are clearly excited to play for him
The juxtaposition of Igor Stravinsky and Alexander Glazunov on one CD is a little puzzling. Neither composer had the warmest admiration for the other. The producer’s rationale is that all three ballet scores presented here are by Russian composers and were premiered in the first two decades of the last century. Stravinsky, though, referred to Glazunov as “Carl Philip Emmanuel Rimsky-Korsakov,” a jibe which perhaps indicates the relative significance of Glazunov compared with his mentor, but which I believe substantially overlooks the aesthetic differences between those two composers. As for the conservative Glazunov, he said Petrushka was “not music,” although he praised its orchestration. I suspect Pristine Audio planned to release The Seasons, but was puzzled over a coupling, as Glazunov made no further commercial recordings. So we have here the shotgun marriage of Stravinsky to Glazunov. Nevertheless, this CD may be considered a bargain. A copy of Dutton’s reissue of The Seasons currently costs $215 on Amazon Marketplace.
The present suite from Petrushka, recorded in London with an unnamed orchestra in 1928, was Stravinsky’s first commercially released recording as a conductor. It finds him in striking form, leading musicians who are clearly excited to play for him. It also is a welcome opportunity to hear the composer conduct music from his original 1911 score, as his stereo version of the complete ballet employs his 1947 revision, which Nicolas Slonimsky referred to as a “self-mutilation.” Whether Stravinsky prepared the revision out of conviction or the desire to finally have the ballet copyrighted, we may never know. It seems a gray area to me. The present suite has numerous excisions from the complete version, most notably Petrushka’s death and reappearance as a ghost.

The result was a farsa mimica in two scenes, entitled El corregidor y la molinera, which was produced on 7th April 1917 at the Teatro Eslava in Madrid under Joaquín Turina. After Dyagilev had suggested a few modifications Falla expanded it into a full-scale ballet, re-scored it for full orchestra and restored Alarcón's own title. In this form it was staged for the first time, as The Three-Cornered Hat, on 22nd July 1919 in the aptly-named Alhambra Theatre in London, by the Ballets Russes under Ernest Ansermet, with choreography by Léonide Massine (who also played the miller) and sets and costumes by Picasso. The ballet was produced at the Opéra in Paris on 23rd January 1920, as Le Tricorne. The formal, old-fashioned Dance of the Corregidor, played here in a transcription for harp by David Watkins, comes from the second scene.
El amor brujo ('Love the Magician') was composed between November 1914 and April 1915, at the instigation of the gypsy singer and dancer Pastora Imperio, who asked Falla and Sierra for 'a dance and a song'. The original version, scored for mezzo-soprano and small instrumental ensemble, was given for the first time on 15th April 1915 by Imperio and her company under Moreno Ballesteros, at the Teatro Lara in Madrid, but it was not a success. The Press actually criticised the score for its lack of Spanish character; an astonishing assertion when one considers that, although no folk tunes as such are used in it, the music was radically influenced by the Andalusian soleares, seguiiriyas, polos and martinetes which Rosario la Mejorana, Pastora's mother, had sung to Falla. Other performances followed in Barcelona, but in 1916 Falla re-scored it for a normal theatre orchestra (but with an important piano part), in which form it received successful concert performances (with and without the songs) in Madrid. This revised version was staged for the first time on 22nd May 1925, when the ballet was produced at the Trianon-Lyrique Theatre in Paris, with the composer conducting Spectacles Bériza.

With a poker table backdrop for dancers dressed as playing cards, the whimsical Jeu de Cartes pairs fleet-footed choreography with Stravinsky's boisterous and wildly rhythmic score.
Stravinsky composed Jeu de Cartes (Card Game: A Ballet in Three Deals) for the first Stravinsky Festival mounted by Balanchine at the Metropolitan Opera in 1937. The original version featured dancers representing the four suits in a deck of cards, with the joker as the central character. Years later, Balanchine suggested that Peter Martins choreograph an abstract version of the ballet to the same score. For the 1992 Diamond Project, Martins re-envisioned the ballet and in 2002 commissioned Ian Falconer to create a fanciful new set and costumes.
VIEW A SLIDESHOW OF IMAGES FROM JEU DE CARTES >

Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides will be given its Revival Premiere on Friday, November 1 with Hee Seo, Isabella Boylston and Sarah Lane making their debuts in leading roles. Cory Stearns and Polina Semionova will debut in the leading roles, alongside Veronika Part and Melanie Hamrick, at the matinee on Saturday, November 2. Set to music by Frédéric Chopin, Les Sylphides, a one act plotless work, was given its Company Premiere at Ballet Theatre's inaugural performance on January 11, 1940 at the Center Theatre in New York City. The ballet received its first performance at the Maryinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg on March 8, 1908. Les Sylphides, which features scenery by Alexandre Benois and lighting by David K.H. Elliott, was last performed by ABT in 2005.

In addition to his dancing, Mr. Wheeldon has choreographed works for Boston Ballet, Carolina Ballet, The Colorado Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The Royal Ballet School, San Francisco Ballet and the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet. Mr. Wheeldon was one of six choreographers who presented new works as part of The Diamond Project throughout New York City Ballet's 1997 spring season. His ballet Slavonic Dances, set to music by Dvorak, had its world premiere in June, 1997. In 1999 he choreographed Scenes de ballet (Stravinsky) for New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Festival and School of American Ballet's Workshop Performances. Mr. Wheeldon's other choreographic credits include Firebird (Stravinsky) for Boston Ballet in 1999, Sea Pictures (Elgar) for San Francisco Ballet in 2000, Mercurial Manoeuvres (Shostakovich) for New York City Ballet's spring 2000 Diamond Project as well as the ballet sequence for the Columbia Pictures feature film Center Stage directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Mr. Wheeldon retired from dancing in 2000 to concentrate on his choreographic work. Chosen to be New York City Ballet's first Artist in Residence, he was named Resident Choreographer in 2001 and went on to create Polyphonia (Ligeti) that premiered January 2001 and Variations Sérieuses (Mendelssohn) in May 2001. For the Hamburg Ballet he created VIII as part of their Benjamin Britten evening in July 2001. Mr. Wheeldon made his Broadway choreographic debut in the musical The Sweet Smell of Success that premiered March 14, 2002. He completed a choreographic cycle to Ligeti music by creating Continuum for San Francisco Ballet and Morphoses for New York City Ballet. Mr. Wheeldon's new works include Tryst to the music of Scottish composer James MacMillan for the Royal Ballet, Carousel (Rodgers), Liturgy (Pärt) and Carnival of the Animals (Saint-Saëns) with original narration by John Lithgow. In 2004 Mr. Wheeldon will create and mount Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky) for Pennsylvania Ballet and premiere a new work with New York City Ballet to a commissioned score by Scottish composer James MacMillian.

Petersburg, having travelled widely through Russia for a year discovering many previously unknown masterpieces of Russian portrait art. In the following year he took a major exhibition of Russian art to the Petit Palais in Paris. It was the beginning of a long involvement with France. In 1907 he presented five concerts of Russian music in Paris, and in 1908 mounted a production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, starring Feodor Chaliapin, at the Paris Opéra.
This led to an invitation to return the following year with ballet as well as opera, and thus to the launching of his famous Ballets Russes. The company included the best young Russian dancers, among them Anna Pavlova, Adolph Bolm, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina and Vera Karalli, and their first night on 19 May 1909 was a sensation.
During these years Diaghilev's stagings included several compositions by the late Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, such as the operas The Maid of Pskov, May Night, and The Golden Cockerel. His balletic adaptation of the orchestral suite Sheherazade, staged in 1910, drew the ire of the composer's widow, Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, who protested in open letters to Diaghilev published in the periodical Rech. Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Nikolai Tcherepnin (Narcisse et Echo, 1911), Claude Debussy (Jeux, 1913), Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, 1912), Erik Satie (Parade, 1917), Manuel de Falla (El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917), Richard Strauss (Josephslegende, 1914), Sergei Prokofiev (Ala and Lolli, 1915, rejected by Diaghilev and turned into the Scythian Suite; Chout, 1915 revised 1920; Le pas d'acier, 1926; and The Prodigal Son, 1929); Ottorino Respighi (La Boutique fantasque, 1919); Francis Poulenc (Les biches, 1923) and others. His choreographer Michel Fokine often adapted the music for ballet.

In the final section, as the score goes back to opening motifs, the dancers resume the same opening image of four male dancers facing the back of the stage.
Stravinsky finished the score in the spring of 1957 and Agon premiered on December 1, 1957, as part of a triple bill featuring Apollo and Orpheus. It was an easy winner with the audience, since it depicted classical ballet in a different and novel way, showing conflict and resolution between various forms of dance, movement and shape.
Sorry no YouTube videos! But there are certain DVDs and VHS* tapes (if you are able to view these) featuring glimpses of Agon.
- Balanchine (1984) [link]
- The Balanchine Celebration, Part Two* [link]
- Bringing Balanchine Back [link]
- Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas [link]
- Peter Martins: Dancer* [link]
Agon had its first concert performance in June 1957 in Los Angeles. It is still often performed on its own and much valued as a piece which combines both serial and non-serial elements. At an average length of 25 min, it can be easily uploaded to your favourite mp3 player. It can be downloaded from iTunes [link] or streamed via Spotify [link].
Choreography: George Balanchine
Music: Igor Stravinsky
Original Cast: Todd Bolender, Barbara Milberg, Barbara Walczak, Roy Tobias, Jonathan Watts, Melissa Hayden, Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell.
Premiere: December 1, 1957, NYCB. City Center of Music and Drama, New York.
Sources and Further Information
- Agon in Context by Richard Jones. Ballet.co Magazine, April 2004. [link]
- Wikipedia Entry for Agon (ballet) [link]
- NYCB Agon Repertory Notes [link]
- 50 Years Ago, Modernism Was Given a Name: Agon by Alastair Macaulay. November 2007, NY Times [link]
- The Bransles of Stravinsky’s Agon: A Transition to Serial Composition by Bonnie S. Jacobi. [link]

Set design by Léon Bakst
|Choreographed by||Michel Fokine|
|Composed by||Frederic Chopin|
|Date of premiere||2 June 1909|
|Place of premiere||Théâtre du Châtelet
|Original ballet company||Diaghilev's Ballets Russes|
|Designs by||Alexandre Benois|
Les Sylphides (English: The Sylphs) is a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine to the music of Frederic Chopin. The music was orchestrated by Stravinsky among others. The scenery and costumes were designed by Alexandre Benois.
The ballet was first performed by the Ballets Russes in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet on 2 June 1909. It starred Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, and Maria Baldina. The ballet is non-narrative. It does not tell a story. It is a series of dances meant to evoke the atmosphere and ambiance of a romantic ballet.
Les Sylphides was developed from a Fokine ballet called Chopiniana. This ballet was performed in St Petersburg on 21 March 1908. It was a series of imagined scenes from Chopin's life that included a Polish wedding and a ballroom polonaise. It was revised. All characters and any suggestion of a plot were dropped to create instead an evocation of the romantic ballet.
The revised ballet (still called Chopiniana) was performed in St Petersburg on 6 April 1908. This second version was costumed in the long white ballet tutu made famous by Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide. Chopiniana was renamed Les Sylphides when it was presented in Paris.
Les Sylphides generally includes the following musical numbers:
- Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1 ("Military", the Prelude in A major, Op. 28, No. 7 is sometimes substituted)
- Nocturne in A flat major, Op. 32, No. 2
- Waltz in G flat major, Op. 70, No. 1
- Mazurka in D major, Op. 33, No. 2
- Mazurka in C major, Op. 67, No.

I watched the New York City Ballet doing George Balanchine’s *Stravinsky Violin Concerto* on March 12, 2021. It was a performance from September of 2018. The New York City Ballet Orchestra was conducted by Clotilde Otranto with Kurt Nikkanen playing the solo violin part. The solo dancers were Sterling Hyltin, Ask la Cour, Sara Mearns, and Taylor Stanley.
I’ve been a fan of Balanchine for years but have seen relatively little of his work, probably because I’ve seen so little ballet in general. I look forward to the day when I can see works like this in person.
Mearns was the only dancer I knew. I had first seen her in *I Married an Angel* at City Center Encores, in the Merce Cunningham centennial celebration at BAM, and most recently in a performance of Molissa Fenley’s *State of Darkness* (Fenley’s version of *The Rite of Spring*). She’s an extraordinary dancer, full of strength and personality and eager to express herself and do something out of the ordinary. Her partner in the pas de deux was Taylor Stanley. I love that Balanchine gives the men something interesting to do, rather than just lifting the woman and jumping around.
Is it rude to say that the music was the star of the performance? This is from Stravinsky’s “neo-classical” period. I wouldn’t say it’s less modern than what came before, but it feels like it’s honoring and looking back at the past in a way that his earlier work doesn’t do in such an overt way. It’s the harmonies, the structure, the overall flavor. The music has that thing I value so highly and hear so rarely: it has WIT.
Balanchine was a huge admirer of Stravinsky and created dances to his music throughout his career. This piece was part of a Stravinsky festival in 1972, just a year after Stravinsky’s death. As often with Balanchine, there’s no story, it’s pure dance, but somehow it’s so expressive and meaningful.
Here's a somewhat shaky performance (in terms of the video) from 1978, danced by (mostly) the original 1972 cast:

The Master's Settings Of Russian Favorites New York City Ballet New York State Theater
Recent programs by the New York City Ballet featured works by George Balanchine to two of his favorite Russian composers.
"Stravinsky Violin Concerto" was offered on both Tuesday night and at the June 11 matinee, featuring newcomers in some of the leading roles.
On June 11, with Lourdes Lopez as his partner, Nikolaj Hubbe made his debut in the second pas de deux; on Tuesday, his partner was Yvonne Borree, also making a debut in this duet. The two performances went well. But their taut performances made it especially interesting to see Ms. Borree and Mr. Hubbe together.
Helene Alexopoulos made her debut in the first pas de deux on Tuesday, with Albert Evans as her partner. Each appeared to magnetize the other. The duet was danced more teasingly on June 11 by Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto. Guillermo Figueroa was the violinist both times.
On June 11, fine work by Kipling Houston, Ms. Alexopoulos, Melinda Roy, Ben Huys, Katrina Killian and Michael Byars proved effective in the lush choreography of "Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3."
In the concluding "Tema con Variazioni," Nichol Hlinka danced with a jewel-like brilliance. Damian Woetzel invested his first solo with dignity and his second with boldness.Continue reading the main story
The June 11 program also included "Divertimento No. 15"; on Tuesday the Stravinsky concerto shared the bill with "Watermill." The conductors were Maurice Kaplow and Gordon Boelzner. JACK ANDERSONContinue reading the main story

Instead, the suite ends with “The Masqueraders,” providing a conclusion that has real instrumental punch, rather than pathos. Stravinsky’s performance is filled with passion and considerable dramatic understanding. Even the no-nonsense approach of Pierre Boulez in his two recordings of the complete ballet sounds slack by comparison. “The Shrovetide Fair” offers a real feeling of greasepaint, as all its participants are sharply characterized. In “The Magic Trick,” the solo flute seems to beckon to the audience at the fair. The “Russian Dance” blends folk music with wonderfully edgy orchestral effects. “Petrushka’s Room” presents an astute psychological portrait of the tortured, misshapen doll, with the solo piano making a superb contribution. The dances in the evening at the fair are loaded with color. We also are given the final five movements of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite, with the composer leading Paris’s Straram Orchestra. The performance mixes exuberance with a perhaps unexpected degree of warmth for the Neoclassical style of the composer.
Apparently the most famous anecdote about Glazunov as a conductor is that he supposedly was drunk for the disastrous premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony. It’s possible Glazunov viewed the symphony as being dangerously progressive, and couldn’t face his task without being fortified with alcohol. I would note that Glazunov, after leaving Russia, embarked on a conducting tour of the United States, managed by none other than Sol Hurok. The performance we have here of his own music is masterful. José Serebrier has written that the failure of Glazunov’s symphonies to achieve wide popularity is due to conductors not taking enough interpretive license with expression. I disagree. What we hear on the composer’s own recording of The Seasons, with a thoroughly captivated unnamed London orchestra, is an approach to conducting that is at once refined and direct. There is plenty of beauty of tone color and phrasing, but never a gesture that seems extravagant. My favorite conductor of Glazunov today is not Serebrier but Alexander Anissimov, whose approach is entirely more classical. As for the popularity of Glazunov’s music, its patrician charm and lack of histrionics probably make it unsuited to the admiration of the broader public.

The audience, packed into the newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to the point of standing room only, had neither seen nor heard anything like it.
As the first few bars of the orchestral work The Rite of Spring – Le Sacre du Printemps – by the young, little-known Russian composer Igor Stravinsky sounded, there was a disturbance in the audience. It was, according to some of those present – who included Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy – the sound of derisive laughter.
By the time the curtain rose to reveal ballet dancers stomping the stage, the protests had reached a crescendo. The orchestra and dancers, choreographed by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky, continued but it was impossible to hear the music above what Stravinsky described as a "terrific uproar".
As a riot ensured, two factions in the audience attacked each other, then the orchestra, which kept playing under a hail of vegetables and other objects. Forty people were forcibly ejected.
The reviews were merciless. "The work of a madman … sheer cacophony," wrote the composer Puccini. "A laborious and puerile barbarity," added Le Figaro's critic, Henri Quittard.
It was 29 May 1913. Classical music would never be the same again.
On Wednesday evening at the same theatre in Paris, a 21st-century audience – hopefully without vegetables — will fill the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées for a reconstruction of the original performance to mark the 100th anniversary of the notorious premiere. It will be followed by a new version of The Rite by the Berlin-based choreographer Sasha Waltz, among a series of commemorative performances.
Today, the piece has gone from rioting to rave reviews and is widely considered one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century.
"It conceals some ancient force, it is as if it's filled with the power of the Earth," Waltz said of Stravinsky's music.

Los Angeles Ballet to perform works of Stravinsky and Balanchine
Free to public at Grand Park on Saturday, July 6
May 8, 2013 Los Angeles – The Music Center will partner with Los Angeles Ballet to present that company’s productions of Agon and Rubies on Saturday evening July 6 at 7:30 pm, free to the public. Both have music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by George Balanchine. This free event, under the stars in Grand Park and open to everyone, is part of the broad array of free public events The Music Center is presenting at Grand Park. The event is a one of a kind opportunity to spread a blanket, bring a picnic basket, and enjoy ballet in a whole new way.
Los Angeles Ballet is led by artistic directors Thordal Christensen (former New York City Ballet dancer and former Director of the Royal Danish Ballet) and Colleen Neary (former New York City Ballet soloist under Balanchine's direction). Christensen and Neary will participate in a discussion about Stravinsky and Balanchine after the performance on July 6. For more information please visit musiccenter.org or call (213) 972-0711.
“Los Angeles Ballet is pleased and honored to present collaborative masterpieces of George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky for this occasion. George Balanchine was the innovator that changed classical dance forever, and is responsible for what it has become today. Together with his dear friend Igor Stravinsky they created works of pure musical and choreographic genius. These ballets remain timeless, an inspiration to us all,” said Christensen and Neary.
Stravinsky began writing Agon, a ballet for twelve dancers, in December 1953 and concluded in April 1957; the music was first performed on June 17, 1957 in Los Angeles conducted by Robert Craft, while the first stage performance was given by the New York City Ballet on December 1, 1957 at the City Center of Music and Drama, New York. The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he moved from a diatonic musical language to one based on twelve-tone technique; the music of the ballet thus demonstrates a unique symbiosis of musical idioms.

Prokofiev and Stravinsky restored their friendship, though Prokofiev did not particularly like Stravinsky's later works; it has been suggested that his use of text from Stravinsky's A Symphony of Psalms to characterise the invading Teutonic knights in the film score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) was intended as an attack on Stravinsky's musical idiom. However, Stravinsky himself described Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day, after himself.
Around 1927, the virtuoso's situation brightened; he had exciting commissions from Diaghilev and made concert tours in Russia; in addition, he enjoyed a very successful staging of The Love for Three Oranges in Leningrad (as Saint Petersburg was then known). Two older operas (one of them The Gambler) played in Europe and in 1928 Prokofiev produced his Third Symphony, which was broadly based on his unperformed opera The Fiery Angel. The conductor Serge Koussevitzky characterized the Third as "the greatest symphony since Tchaikovsky's Sixth."
During 1928-29 Prokofiev composed what was to be the last ballet for Diaghilev, The Prodigal Son, which was staged on 21 May 1929 in Paris with Serge Lifar in the title role. Diaghilev died only months later.
In 1929, Prokofiev wrote the Divertimento, Op. 43 and revised his Sinfonietta, Op. 5/48, a work started in his days at the Conservatory. Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that he could never understand why the Sinfonietta was so rarely performed, whereas the "Classical" Symphony was played everywhere. Later in this year, however, he slightly injured his hands in a car crash, which prevented him from performing in Moscow, but in turn permitted him to enjoy contemporary Russian music. After his hands healed, he toured the United States successfully, propped up by his recent European success. This, in turn, propelled him on another tour through Europe.
In 1930 Prokofiev began his first non-Diaghilev ballet On the Dnieper, Op. 51, a work commissioned by Serge Lifar, who had been appointed maitre de ballet at the Paris Opéra.

This was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.
Balanchine's more than 400 dance works include Serenade
(1934), Concerto Barocco
(1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C
(1948), The Nutcracker
(1957), Symphony in Three Movements
(1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto
(1972), Vienna Waltzes
(1977), Ballo della Regina
(1978), and Mozartiana
(1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky's Variations for Orchestra
, was created in 1982.
He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Among his best-known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway's On Your Toes
(1936). The musical was later made into a movie.
A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world.
Read the complete biography »
Photo, top: George Balanchine.
Courtesy NYCB Archives Tanaquil LeClerq Collection.

In this centenary year of the death of Marius Petipa, the Paris Opera Ballet is celebrating the choreographer with performances of " La Bayadere",a seminal work that entered the receptoire in 1992 in Rudolph Nureyev's version.
First performed at Saint Petersburg's Bolshoi Theatre in 1877, this ballet was one of Marius Petipa's greatest successes. "La Bayadere" has been restaged and revived by Rudolph Nureyev(1992) for the Paris Opera Ballet as a last work choreographed during his tenure as the company's Artistic Director from 1983.
Until 1980,"La Bayadere" a ballet that was over a century old and had been continuously performed in Russia had never been in the West. A well-kept secret in Russia for so long,''La Bayadere" has now claimed its rightful place in the ballet repertory and is certainly one of the most important in the history of 19th century.
This spellbinding Oriental fresco,richy atmospheric tale of romance, betrayal, intrigue and vengeance,takes us to an imaginary India that although sometimes savage and cruel,is nonetheless the place where le plus doux reve triumphs.
Librettist Sergei Khudekov
Composer Ludwig Minkus
First choreography by Marius Petipa
Restaged and revived by Rudolph Nureyev
We were happy to attend and enjoy the performance of "La Bayadere"on Saturday 22 May 2010, at the Opera National De Paris.

The modern theory and practice of ballet were largely developed in mid-eighteenth-century Paris, especially by the royal ballet master Jean Georges Noverre (1727-1810)….Russia first imported French and Italian ballet under Peter the Great, but in the nineteenth century moved rapidly from imitation to creative excellence. Tchaikovsky’s music for Swan Lake (1876), Sleeping Beauty (1890), and The Nutcracker (1892) laid the foundations for Russia’s supremacy. In the last years of peace, the Ballets Russes launched by Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) enjoyed a series of unsurpassed triumphs. The choreography of Fokine, the dancing of Nizinski and Karsavina, and, above all, the scores of Stravinsky, brought ballet to its zenith with The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). After the Revolutions of 1917, the Ballets Russes stayed abroad, whilst the Soviet Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets combined stunning technical mastery with rigid artistic conservatism.”
The Russian-born composer, pianist and conductor Igor Stravinsky was arguably the most important composer of his time and had an enormous influence on later composers. He was born near St. Petersburg to a well-to-do musical family. He began piano lessons at the age of nine and studied music theory in his teens. After hearing some of his early compositions, the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) commissioned Stravinsky to compose for his Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet), which reigned in Paris from 1909 to 1929. Stravinsky then wrote the ballets that made him famous and are still among his most popular works: The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. The Firebird was based on Russian folk tales. He collaborated on them with the Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokin (1880-1942), founder of the modern ballet style, and the brilliant dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950), born in Kiev, Ukraine, the son of a Polish dancer.
Igor Stravinsky moved to Paris in 1911 and to Switzerland in 1914. Six years later, after becoming stranded in the West because of World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution, he returned to France.

Just a month before the Nutcracker Suite was premiéred in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky hurriedly set about orchestrating and completing ideas from his roughly sketched-out Nutcracker ballet, and compiling them into a short symphonic work, ready for its premiere in March 1892. By this point, he had not even named the work, and in surviving sketches it is referred to as the ‘Fir Tree’ and ‘Christmas Tree’ ballet suites.
Despite the rush to find something suitable for the concert he was preparing, what became known as the ‘Nutcracker Suite‘ was an instant success. In the same year, it was also performed in Moscow and Chicago, and in the following year, Tchaikovsky conducted performances in Brussels and Odessa, in the Ukraine.
The suite has three broad movements, beginning with the Miniature Overture. This cute sonatina opening also opens the ballet, which was premiéred in December 1892, and sets the toy-like, playful tone of the work. Interestingly, this overture does not include any lower strings at all – with only violas and violins performing from the string section, with little bass at all in the orchestra.
The Dances follow, with six short dances, from act two, grouped into one larger movement. The famous March opens the movement, before introducing the iconic Dance of the sugar-plum fairy, which used the newly-invented Celeste, almost a cross between a glockenspiel and a piano. Tchaikovsky saw a Celeste for the first time the year before, and wrote to his publisher asking for one – but to keep it a secret… he wanted to be the first to use it. Next, the Russian Dance is followed by the gentle Arabian Dance and the rhythmic Chinese Dance, famous for its difficult, impressive choreography. The Dance of the Mirlitons closes the movement, which is the longest dance by far, using a gentle flute trio for its main motif.
Tchaikovsky closes the suite with the Waltz of the Flowers, a prime example of romantic music. The gentle arpeggio-based melody is introduced by the woodwind section, before a graceful harp cadenza links the Waltz into the music. This is the longest movement by far, with 353 bars, taking around 12 minutes, before bringing the hurriedly-prepared suite to a dignified close.

Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) premiered 100 years ago in Paris! Russian pianist Svetlana Belsky discusses and performs the entire work, transcribed for one piano by Chicago’s own Vladimir Leyetchkiss.
Critically acclaimed as “a passionate pianist and scholar”, Svetlana Belsky is an in-demand recitalist and chamber pianist, noted for her remarkable rapport with audiences and stylistic versatility. She has appeared in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, China, and Hong Kong, and throughout the United States. Her performance credits include Carnegie Recital Hall, Kiev Philharmonic Hall, Dame Myra Hess Series, Music in the Loft, countless university concert series, live recitals on Chicago’s WFMT and New York’s WQXR, and guest appearances with the University of Chicago Symphony, Southern Illinois Symphony, Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Tutti Orchestra.
Program: THE RITE OF SPRING by Igor Stravinsky
Part I: L’Adoration de la Terre (Adoration of the Earth)
Les Augures printaniers (Augurs of Spring)
Jeu du rapt (Ritual of Abduction)
Rondes printanières (Spring Rounds)
Jeux des cités rivales (Ritual of the Rival Tribes)
Cortège du sage: Le Sage (Procession of the Sage: The Sage)
Danse de la terre (Dance of the Earth)
Part II: Le Sacrifice (The Sacrifice)
Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes (Mystic Circles of the Young Girls)
Glorification de l’élue (Glorification of the Chosen One)
Evocation des ancêtres (Evocation of the Ancestors)
Action rituelle des ancêtres (Ritual Action of the Ancestors)
Danse sacrale (L’Elue) (Sacrifical Dance)

The reconstruction was the culmination of more than 15 years of work by Millicent Hodson, a choreographer and dance historian, and her husband Kenneth Archer, an art historian. Hodson and Archer had painstakingly pieced the ballet together from prompt books, contemporary sketches, paintings, photographs, reviews, the original costume designs, annotated scores, and interviews with eye witnesses, such as Dame Marie Rambert, Nijinsky's assistant.
"When the booing and catcalls began, Stravinsky left the hall in a rage and went backstage, where he spent the rest of the performance holding onto Nijinsky's coat-tails while the choreographer stood on a chair shouting numbers (in Russian) to the dancers, to try to keep them in time."
--Wendy Thompson from the London Symphony Orchestra's Bluffer's Guide to The Rite of Spring
Hodson compares the ballet's exhumation to the rediscovery of Pablo Picasso's seminal work Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. In a 2003 London Independent article, she explained, "The ballet is really the forerunner of modern dance as we know it. It was so different to what had gone before: it was angular, abstract and geometric and so special. The costumes had these ritualistic designs which people had never seen before. It created a whole new agenda for dance." Given the innovation of Nijinsky's Sacre, it was fitting that it would be resurrected by the equally innovative Joffrey Ballet. Founded in 1956 by Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, the company's groundbreaking repertory of original works quickly distinguished it from its contemporaries. Over the last 50 years, the Joffrey has performed in more than 400 U.S. cities and 26 countries, including a performance in the former U.S.S.R., the first such tour by an American dance company. The company also has garnered a reputation for granting inaugural commissions to now-legendary choreographers, including Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, and Mark Morris. The NEA has regularly supported the company, including the premiere broadcast of Dance In America, which featured works by Joffrey and Arpino.

It was not an easy transition for him, although he made great strides forward, he was never be able to fully shake off his roots, just as Picasso could never abandon his Bohemian ways.
‘The fact that neither Spain or Russia had undergone a Renaissance made their mutual understanding all the more instinctive’ JR
Picasso and Stravinsky met and firmly bonded, it was a lifetime friendship. It is through this friendship that we learn more about the influences that drove the musical direction of Stravinsky. He created raw minimal pieces and reframed older compositions. Both of these artists drew from their environment in unexpected ways, Picasso could find character in a fork and Stravinsky found music in a scratching sound.
‘Stravinsky had at a stroke re-established himself as the most chic and brilliant modernist’ JR
Picasso left the ballet and embarked on his first marriage with one of the Russian dancers Olga Khokhlova. Stravinsky remained within the Diaghilev hub and teamed up with Balanchine. Stravinsky and Balanchine shared a vision that the music and the choreography should be equal parts that worked together.
Although Stravinsky had been able to work solidly through WW1, it was not a safe place for him in WW2 ,so he had to refugee to America. His new country afforded him employment, but not on his terms.
The Stravinsky that had fooled about with Picasso had grown reserved in America. In Italy, he had sourced from popular culture and allowed himself moments of wild abandonment with the cream of Modern Art .
‘Very drunk Stravinsky raided the rooms upstairs and tossed pillows, bolsters and mattresses onto the heads of the guests below.The ensuing pillow fight kept the party going until three in the morning’JR
Despite the numerous set backs and forced immigrations, Stravinsky stayed one step ahead of destruction. In 1946, he was commission by the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York to compose Symphony in Three Movements. Balanchine created a ballet that would translate the music.
Balanchine’s Ballet is an eclectic blend of cultural references and popular trends. The 50’s were about to dawn and the Ballet showcases girls with long pony-tails in dancing gangs, exotic Asian influences, soldiers and clocks, all portrayed in leotards with no scene props. It is classically rich, within a sheer minimal exterior.
It is modern art, moving.

Ashley Wheater, a former Joffrey dancer who left his position as
assistant director and ballet master of the San Francisco Ballet in 2007
to become only the third artistic director of the Joffrey, dedicates
this series of performances “to the creative force of the New York City
Ballet, in gratitude for the support we have received through the years
from these choreographers.”
And what a star-studded repertoire this “All Stars” program promises
to be with the capable dancers on the Joffrey roster presenting three
Joffrey premieres: Balanchine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” Robbins’
“The Concert” (or “The Perils of Everybody”) and Wheeldon’s “After the
Rain,” along with Balanchine’s “Tarantella,” which was premiered by the
Joffrey last spring.
In the Stravinsky piece, revised in 1972 from a 1941 endeavor,
Balanchine forms two contrasting pas de deux, one soft and lyrical, the
other sharply angular, that are rooted in the folk dance traditions of
Georgia, then a part of the Soviet Union.
Wheeldon’s “After the Rain,” an exquisite piece set to the minimalist
classical music of Arvo Part, is the first time Wheeldon has awarded
the rights to perform the entire piece to a company other than his own.
Again, there are striking contrasts. The first section is marked by
three couples in steel-gray costumes, creating bold lines and intricate
lifts; the second shifts to a tender relationship as dancers explore the
space between them in an emotional push and pull. Set to the music of
Frederick Chopin and played onstage by a pianist, Robbins’ “The Concert”
is a light-hearted satire of dance in a series of vignettes.
Balanchine’s “Tarantella” (1964) is an explosive pas de deux set to the
“Grand Tarantelle for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 67,” by Louis Moreau
Tickets are available at the Joffrey box office, 19 E. Randolph St., at (800) 982-2787 or online at ticketmaster.com.
Receive special offer alerts and updates right to your phone!Text joffrey to 366948 to opt into Joffrey Mobile Alerts
© Joffrey Ballet. All rights reserved.

Fokine established an international reputation with his works choreographed during the first four seasons (1909-1912) of the Ballets Russes, including: the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor (1909, music by Borodin), Le Pavillon d'Armide (1909, a revival of his 1907 production for the Imperial Russian Ballet, music by Tcherepnin), Les Sylphides (a 1909 reworking of his earlier Chopiniana), The Firebird (1910, music by Stravinsky), Le Spectre de la Rose (1911, music by Weber), Petrushka (1911, music by Stravinsky), and Daphnis and Chloé (1912, music by Ravel).
After a longstanding tumultuous relationship with Diaghilev, Fokine left the Ballets Russes at the end of the 1912 season.
Vaslav Nijinsky (1889 or 1890–1950) had attended the Imperial Ballet School, St. Petersburg since the age of 8. He graduated in 1907 and joined the Imperial Ballet where he immediately began to take starring roles. Diaghilev invited him to join the Ballets Russes for its first (1909) Paris season.
In 1912, Diaghilev gave Nijinsky his first opportunity as a choreographer: L'Après-midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun) to music composed by Claude Debussy in 1894: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Featuring Nijinsky himself as the Faun, the ballet's frankly erotic nature caused a sensation. The following year (1913), Nijinsky choreographed a new work by Debussy composed expressly for the Ballets Russes: Jeux (Games). Indifferently received by the public, Jeux was eclipsed two weeks later by the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps), also choreographed by Nijinsky.
Because of mental illness, Nijinsky eventually retired from dance; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Léonide Massine (1896-1979) was born in Moscow, where he studied both acting and dancing at the Imperial School.

Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Serenade in C for string orchestra, Op. 48, 1880)
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust
Staging: Francia Russell
Costume Design: Karinska
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Duration: 35 minutes
Premiere: June 10, 1934, School of American Ballet (White Plains, New York); March 1, 1935, American Ballet (New York, New York)
Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: September 29, 1978
Choreographed originally in 1934 for students at the recently-founded School of American Ballet, Serenade is the very first work that George Balanchine created for American dancers. The remarkable story of its composition has often been told. Deciding after class one day that "the best way to make students aware of stage technique was to give them something new to dance," Balanchine began to choreograph a new work, to Tchaikovsky's lush Serenade in C for String Orchestra, improvising with whatever students were availableseventeen that first day, varying numbers on succeeding days, eventually a few men; and incorporating chance happenings, such as a dancer's fall or late arrival, into the overall design of the piece. Making a virtue of his students' technical limitations and lack of finesse, he also contrived to build simple movements into consequential stage events, to give unprecedented importance to the ensemble rather than to individuals, and to infuse the whole with a freshness and candor that have struck many viewers as the first expression of a distinctively American style.
Although Balanchine continued to revise Serenade for many years as he adapted it to the developing abilities of his dancers, the ballet has always retained the uniqueeven idiosyncraticcharacter that was determined by those early circumstances. Romantic in form and feeling, it also has always tantalized audiences with its hints of a mysterious narrative, though Balanchine consistently refused to define what that narrative might be. Instead, he insisted that because Tchaikovsky's score "has in its danceable four movements different qualities suggestive of different emotions and human situations," a "plot" seems to emerge that is "many things to many listeners to the music, and many things to many people who see the ballet."

Stravinsky – Scherzo Fantastique
Written by Jeff Counts
THE COMPOSER – IGOR STRAVINSKY – Stravinsky’s long and productive life is easily separated today into distinct phases or periods. The clarity with which contemporary scholarship can identify these evolutionary shifts speaks to a certain genius in the composer for self re-invention and an almost willful sense of historical timing. In 1908, Stravinsky was nearing the end of his pupil days under Rimsky-Korsakov (an ending hastened by the master’s death) and poised for his first great leap.
THE MUSIC – The importance of Scherzo Fantastique for the young Stravinsky was not so much in what it was but rather what it did. In a performance which also included his Fireworks, Stravinsky was able to win the ear of Serge Diaghilev, who was in need of a composer for his budding Ballet Russe project. The first significant result of their artistic interaction would be nothing less than The Firebird, a work which set Stravinsky on the path to lasting international stardom. Scherzo Fantastique itself owed much to the music of the French impressionists and uses as its programmatic source a literary work by the Symbolist (and Debussy muse) Maurice Maeterlinck entitled La vie des abeilles (The Life of the Bee). The future Stravinsky is subtly present in the music with harmonies that are, in his own words to Rimsky-Korsakov, alternately “fierce, like a toothache” and “agreeable, like cocaine.” Though the Scherzo was Stravinsky’s first independent, non-academic orchestral work, his teacher’s touches are still evident in the orchestration and the magical, “fantastic” qualities of the musical story-telling. Rimsky-Korsakov certainly heard portions of the work and spoke of it fondly with his friends, but he never heard it performed in concert. It is difficult to know what the master might have ultimately found in his star pupil’s fledgling effort, but we do know what Diaghilev saw. The daring chance he took on such an unknown and unproven 26-year-old changed the course of 20th century orchestral history.
THE WORLD – 1908 was the year of the first airplane passenger and the founding of the Boy Scouts in Britain.

Diaghilev became sufficiently interested in the opera to request Prokofiev play the vocal score to him in June 1922, while they were both in Paris for a revival of Chout, so he could consider it for a possible production. Stravinsky, who was present at the audition, refused to listen to more than the first act. When he then accused Prokofiev of "wasting time composing operas", Prokofiev retorted that Stravinsky "was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction, since he is himself not immune to error". According to Prokofiev, Stravinsky "became incandescent with rage" and "we almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty". As a result, "our relations became strained and for several years Stravinsky's attitude toward me was critical."
In March 1922, Prokofiev moved with his mother to the town of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps, where for over a year he concentrated on an opera project, The Fiery Angel, based on the novel by Valery Bryusov. His later music had acquired a following in Russia, and he received invitations to return there, but decided to stay in Europe. In 1923, Prokofiev married the Spanish singer Carolina Codina (1897–1989, stage name Lina Llubera) before moving back to Paris.
In Paris, several of his works, including the Second Symphony, were performed, but their reception was lukewarm and Prokofiev sensed that he "was evidently no longer a sensation". Still, the Symphony appeared to prompt Diaghilev to commission Le pas d'acier (The Steel Step), a "modernist" ballet score intended to portray the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. It was enthusiastically received by Parisian audiences and critics.
Around 1924, Prokofiev was introduced to Christian Science. He began to practice its teachings, which he believed to be beneficial to his health and to his fiery temperament and to which he remained faithful for the rest of his life, according to biographer Simon Morrison.
Prokofiev and Stravinsky restored their friendship, though Prokofiev particularly disliked Stravinsky's "stylization of Bach" in such recent works as the Octet and the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments.

performed by the Goldner String Quartet, or below by the Alban Berg Quartet
(cover image by David von Diemar)
One of Stravinsky’s few efforts in the string quartet form, the Three Pieces dates from 1914, right after Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. At the time, Stravinsky was living in Switzerland, but apparently not settled there, as it was his home for the winter. He would apparently return to Russia for summers, but as Chris Darwin says, that was “a pattern that was about to be broken by the outbreak of war.”
These three little pieces together play for only about seven minutes, and are unconnected, truly pieces and not movements:
They didn’t even have names or titles upon release. These were later adapted in a piece for orchestra and the corresponding orchestra adaptations were then given the titles Dance, Eccentric, and Canticle, respectively.
The first and shortest, at only a minute, is maybe the most memorable, and an excellent example of how a little bit of critical listening can reveal quite a lot of detail about the conscious choices made by a composer.
This first ‘dance’ immediately sounds rustic, like busking street performers, not only in the violin’s more fiddle-like sound, but in the drone from the viola, the raspy downward figure from second violin, and the plucked cello. There are other analyses you can find online about this piece, but in a number of ways, the four instruments are treated almost wholly independently. They’re each doing their own thing, and it never really falls into place until the end. The cello forms the backbone of the little dance, outlining the constantly-shifting meter. The viola drones at both ends of the dance; Darwin says that it is “like a bagpipe with toothache.” First violin presents the melody and second interjects here and there, as if to protest. There’s a lot of repetition, but none of these repetitions are in any kind of synchronicity. It all still works, though, doesn’t it?

The first-night audience was a glittering assemblage, with one dignitary after another coming to Diaghilev's box to greet the impresario and his brilliant protégé. According to Stravinsky's much later memoirs - and he does confess to not recalling whether all these people were there on opening night or at subsequent performances - in attendance were Marcel Proust, Jean Giraudoux, St.-John Perse, and, definitely at a later performance, Sarah Bernhardt. During the initial run Stravinsky also met Debussy and the two instantly became friends.
"The orchestral body of The Firebird was wastefully large," Stravinsky was later to write in one of his periodic - inevitably negative - reviews of his early career, "but I was more proud of some of the orchestration than of the music itself." (Stravinsky subsequently reorchestrated the music less lavishly in the second and third suites he devised.) He confesses, too, that he sold the Firebird manuscript in 1919 to "a wealthy and generous ex-croupier from Monte Carlo" who would donate it to the Geneva Conservatory of Music, and that the score "has been a mainstay in my life as a conductor." Stravinsky in fact made his debut as a conductor with the complete score, at a 1915 Red Cross benefit in Paris. "And, don't forget," he further informs us, "I was once addressed by a man in an American railway dining car as 'Mr. Fireberg'."
Through all his cranky comments, however, shines the composer's affection for his youthful triumph, and it has remained his most frequently performed score.
- Herbert Glass, after many years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has for the past decade been the English-language annotator and editor for the Salzburg Festival.

"It's the best possible ballet music, apart from Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky," says Ratmansky.
The work's rarity on ballet stages was also an attraction. There are only two major extant versions of Harlequinade: the one Balanchine made for New York City Ballet in 1965, and a one-act led by the Soviet choreographer Pyotr Gusev, based largely on Fyodor Lopukhov's 1933 version. (There is also a frequently performed "Harlequinade pas de deux," but it has no connection to the full ballet.)
Neither the Balanchine nor the Gusev, however, is a "reconstruction" of the original Petipa ballet, which is what this staging aims to be. As with his Sleeping Beauty and his upcoming Bayadère for Staatsballett Berlin (coming this November), Ratmansky has gone back to notations written down in the days when the ballet was being performed at the Imperial Ballet.
Like many of these notations, the ones created for Harlequinade are not easy to decipher, and are incomplete. Where there are gaps, Ratmansky has stepped in, choreographing in a style inspired by Petipa. Rehearsals at ABT have been painstaking but also highly creative, with the dancers occasionally providing ideas for how best to depict their characters, particularly in mime scenes, of which there are many. The costumes and sets, by Robert Perdziola, are inspired by the originals, drawings of which are kept in the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. As with any reconstruction, the archival materials are only a staring point. But in Ratmansky's view, there is a lot to be learned from living inside the choreography of a past master.
- This ABT Dancer Isn't Afraid to Fall on His Face - Dance Magazine ›
- American Ballet Theatre Harlequinade Video ›
On August 19, 1929, shockwaves were felt throughout the dance world as news spread that impresario Sergei Diaghilev had died. The founder of the Ballets Russes rewrote the course of ballet history as the company toured Europe and the U.S., championing collaborations with modernist composers, artists and designers such as Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel.

Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel. Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian ballerina Ida Rubenstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel's most famous musical composition. Before Boléro, Ravel had composed large scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (such as the second orchestral version of Ma Mère l'Oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (such as La Valse, 1906-1920). Apart from such compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes (the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane) to his more mature works like Le tombeau de Couperin (which takes the format of a dance suite).
Boléro epitomises Ravel's preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement: the two piano concertos and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée song cycle were the only compositions that followed Boléro.
The work had its genesis in a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel to make an orchestral transcription of six pieces from Isaac Albéniz' set of piano pieces, Iberia. While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that the movements had already been orchestrated by Spanish conductor Enrique Arbós, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. However Ravel changed his mind and decided initially to orchestrate one of his own previously-written works. He then changed his mind again and decided to write a completely new piece based on the musical form and Spanish dance called bolero. While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying "Don't you think this theme has an insistent quality? I'm going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can."

Years later, Mr. Salonen considered buying the house, which had fallen on hard times. The conductor noted the carpet indentations where the great man's pianos had stood, the hook where a goat had been tethered (Stravinsky liked the milk) and the built-in couch where Thomas had slept off more than a few over indulgences. An aspiring composer himself, Mr. Salonen wisely feared the presence of ghosts.
Klemperer and others performed Stravinsky's pieces at the Philharmonic. The composer himself appeared as pianist and conductor. Even the gaping Hollywood Bowl embraced the Stravinsky of ''The Firebird.'' The publisher Boosey & Hawkes eventually provided him a comfortable annual retainer, and there were the constant tours and travels for a man less famous than Clark Gable but not too far behind.
This month and last, the peripheral events around town have included small dramatizations (''A Word With Igor'' at the Los Angeles Central Library), panel discussions on Stravinsky's influence here (''The Eclectic Stravinsky'' at the Armand Hammer Museum at U.C.L.A.) and reminiscences of recording sessions and concerts from those who were there.
A recent program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion offered instructive contrasts: the ballet score ''Agon,'' the little opera ''Mavra,'' in concert form, and ''The Rite of Spring.'' ''Mavra'' is one-act Pushkin, Stravinsky's rustic little stab at Russian folklore.
''Agon,'' conforming to its title, is a contest between the tonal and the not-so-tonal. It is music of Stravinsky's old age: the temperature has cooled; the detachment from the audience and from practical performance problems is pronounced. ''Agon,'' indeed, is ballet music of extraordinarily complicated stops and starts, and asymmetrical counterpoint. The Los Angeles players had a hard time with it. Run-of-the-mill ballet orchestras must find it defeating.
What a different world is ''The Rite of Spring,'' this wild beast of a piece that even after 88 years and thousands of performances, still tears at the listener's viscera. It speaks to the young, and an unusually youthful audience stomped and yelled with enthusiasm.

By CYRUS PARKER-JEANETTE
A recent donation of archival materials of 20th century dancer and choreographer Adolph Bolm (1884-1951) represents another important addition to the dance collections in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. These materials are particularly relevant to the Library because Bolm was the first choreographer invited to stage a work at the Library's Coolidge Auditorium during the 1928 Chamber Music Festival in collaboration with Igor Stravinsky, who was commissioned to compose the score for "Apollon Musagète."
The Bolm collection includes numerous newspaper clippings, correspondence, short manuscripts and biographical outlines by friends and family, as well as stories and photos of his collaborations with Marc Chagall, George Herriman, Nicholas Remisoff, Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla, John Alden Carpenter and Anna Pavlova.
From 1908 until his death in 1951, Adolph Bolm traveled across the cities of Europe and America with the self-proclaimed wanderlust of a gypsy, establishing companies, training dancers and creating choreography. The Russian-born artist left his homeland and immersed himself in America, developing a broad awareness and understanding of the diverse American culture that even some of his native-born contemporaries lacked.
Bolm was born in St. Petersburg on Sept. 25, 1884, to an intellectual family dedicated to the arts. He auditioned at the age of 16 at the Maryinsky Theatre, home of the Russian Imperial School, and graduated in 1904. Among the choreographers with whom Bolm worked was the great ballet master Mikhail Fokine. At this time Fokine was battling the stultified traditions in Russian theater and dance, seeking to extend the artistic boundaries of the Czar and the Russian aristocracy, and his revolutionary approaches began to have an impact within Russian artistic circles.
In 1908, motivated by this innovative spirit, Bolm organized a small company of Russian dancers with ballerina Anna Pavlova as his partner, marking her first appearances outside Russia. They toured Northern Europe to broad acclaim. The tour itinerary originally included a stop in Paris, but impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was planning the first European season of the new Ballets Russes with Fokine there, pleaded with Bolm to forgo his appearances in Paris.

Pacific Northwest Ballet's Lesley Rausch & Jerome Tisserand
On Dancing Balanchine’s "Stravinsky Violin Concerto"
Pacific Northwest Ballet will perform at New York City Center February 24 – 27
For tickets, go to New York City Center's website.
Pictured above: Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Lesley Rausch and Jerome Tisserand in Coppélia choreographed by Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Angela Sterling.
The Pacific Northwest Ballet, under the direction of Artistic Director Peter Boal, returns to New York City Center with two repertory programs that reflect the company’s reputation for inspired stagings of works by George Balanchine, paired with some of the finest works in contemporary ballet. The first program offers a trio of Balanchine masterpieces — Square Dance, which premiered at City Center in 1957, Prodigal Son, and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. The second program features David Dawson’s A Million Kisses to my Skin, William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, and Crystal Pite’s Emergence. The PNB Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director and Principal Conductor Emil de Cou, will accompany both programs.
The Dance Enthusiast's Henning Rübsam had the opportunity to speak with two principal dancers on their experience in the company and dancing Balanchine's Stravinsky Violin Concerto.
Lesley Rausch, a principal with PNB since 2011, joined the company in 2001. From Columbus, Ohio, she started dancing at the recommendation of her music teacher. “My dance teacher Shir Lee Wu is from China and actually danced with Martha Graham, so we had a Graham class early every Saturday. Not my favorite thing, but it was interesting and good for me and gave me a different perspective.”
TDE: When did you first encounter the Balanchine style?
LR: I was thirteen and fourteen when I took the summer workshops at The School of American Ballet in New York. And here in Seattle we have a lot of Balanchine in the repertoire and I danced at least a dozen of his ballets.
TDE: Is there anything about Violin Concerto that makes it a different experience?

Later he met Diaghilev, the manager of ther Russian Ballets, who visited him in his studio together with Massine and Larionov then in Rome for their show. Diaghilev commissioned him with the construction of the stage scenes and with the plastic-mobile costumes for "Le Chant du Rossignol'' by Stravinskij (which was not realised, probably because of Picasso's pressure on Diaghilev).
Also of these days were several projects of costume-designs ("changeable" and "luminous") for a planned ballet entitled ''Mimismagia" (Magic-mimic dance).
In 1917 the painter Amedeo Modigliani visited his studio. Then, in the spring of the same year Diaghilev asked him to design also the costumes for Francesco Cangiullo's "Giardino Zoologico" (Zoological Garden), a ballet which should have had music written by Ravel (but even this project wasn't accomplished) . Soon after he met Gilbert Clavel, a Swiss poet, who invited him in Capri in order to work together to his book ''Un Istituto per Suicidi'' (Suicides' Institute),
a decadent novel which Depero illustrated with many drawings, then published in Rome by Tavolato.
In Capri they had also the first ideas for the Plastic Theatre, a set of choreographies where they planned to use puppets instead that real dancers.
On September 8th Depero inaugurated an exhibition at the "Sala Morgano" in Anacapri, where he showed his first attempts of tapestry decorations and wall-hangings. Back in Rome he maintained a written relationship with Clavel with whom he then realised the ideas for the Plastic Theatre in the show ''Balli Plastici'' (Plastic Ballets), staged at the "Teatro dei Piccoli" in Rome on April 15th 1918 (and after run eleven times). Musics were written by Casella, Tyrwhitt, Malipiero and Bartok (under the name of Chermenow).
The show featured puppets instead of alive actors:
a mechanical but joyful vision of the world.
In February 1919 he held a one-man exhibition at the ''Casa d'Arte Bragaglia'', in Rome, guest of the famous photographer and inventor of the Futurist photodynamism.

Warburg, the School of American Ballet opened to students on January 2, 1934, less than 3 months after Balanchine arrived in the U.S. Later that year, Balanchine had his students perform in a recital, where they premiered his new work Serenade to music by Tchaikovsky at the Warburg summer estate.
Relocation to West Coast
Balanchine relocated his company to Hollywood during 1938, where he rented a white two-story house with "Kolya", Nicholas Kopeikine, his "rehearsal pianist and lifelong colleague", on North Fairfax Avenue not far from Hollywood Boulevard. Balanchine created dances for five movies, all of which featured Vera Zorina, whom he met on the set of The Goldwyn Follies and who subsequently became his third wife. He reconvened the company as the American Ballet Caravan and toured with it throughout North and South America, but it folded after several years. From 1944 to 1946, during and after World War II, Balanchine served as resident choreographer for Blum & Massine's new iteration of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Return to New York
Soon Balanchine formed a new dance company, Ballet Society, again with the generous help of Lincoln Kirstein. He continued to work with contemporary composers, such as Paul Hindemith, from whom he commissioned a score in 1940 for The Four Temperaments. First performed on November 20, 1946, this modernist work was one of his early abstract and spare ballets, angular and very different in movement. After several successful performances, the most notable featuring the ballet Orpheus created in collaboration with Stravinsky and sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, the City of New York offered the company residency at the New York City Center.
In 1955, Balanchine created his version of The Nutcracker, in which he played the mime role of Drosselmeyer. The company has since performed the ballet every year in New York City during the Christmas season.
After years of illness, Balanchine died on April 30, 1983, aged 79, in Manhattan from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which was diagnosed only after his death. He first showed symptoms during 1978 when he began losing his balance while dancing.

The first ballet with a chess theme was Ballet des Echecs, performed for Louis XIV (1638-1715) of France. A ballet called Checkmate, composed by Sir Arthur Bliss and choreographed by Ninette de Valois in 1937, was performed at the Paris World Exhibition. The first ballet on ice was included in the pantomime, Sinbad the Sailer (1953), where skaters played out the Morphy - Duke of Brunswick game. In 1986 the musical Chess, by Tim Rice, was produced. In 2002, a chess ballet opened the Chess Olympiad in Bled, Slovenia.

He subsequently studied music theory, composition, and advanced piano at the Petrograd Conservatory, graduating in 1923. During this time, he worked with the corps de ballet of the Mariinsky Theater. In 1924, Balanchine (and his first wife, ballerina Tamara Geva) fled to Paris while on tour of Germany with the Soviet State Dancers. He was invited by Sergei Diaghilev to join the Ballets Russes as a choreographer.
Diaghilev invited the collaboration of contemporary fine artists in the design of sets and costumes. These included Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst, Nicholas Roerich, Georges Braque, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Joan Miró, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Ivan Bilibin, Pavel Tchelitchev, Maurice Utrillo, and Georges Rouault.
Their designs contributed to the groundbreaking excitement of the company's productions. The scandal caused by the premiere performance in Paris of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring has been partly attributed to the provocative aesthetic of the costumes of the Ballets Russes.
Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) had been the most influential member of The Nevsky Pickwickians and was one of the original founders (with Bakst and Diaghilev) of Mir iskusstva. His particular interest in ballet as an art form strongly influenced Diaghilev and was seminal in the formation of the Ballets Russes. In addition, Benois contributed scenic and costume designs to several of the company's earlier productions: Le Pavillon d'Armide (1909, music by Tcherepnin), portions of Le Festin (1909, music by several composers), and Giselle (1910, music by Adolphe Adam). Benois also participated with Stravinsky and Fokine in the creation of Petrushka (1911), to which he contributed the much of the scenario as well as the stage sets and costumes.
Léon Bakst (1866-1924) was also an original member of both The Nevsky Pickwickians and Mir iskusstva.

|
|Pablo Picasso (fondali)|
|1925||Les matelots||Georges Auric||Léonide Massine||Pere Pruna|
|1925||Zephyr et Flore||Vernon Duke||Léonide Massine||Georges Braque|
|1926||Jack in the Box||Erik Satie
|George Balanchine||André Derain|
|1926||Pastorale||Georges Auric||George Balanchine||Pere Pruna|
|1926||Romeo and Julieta||Constant Lambert||Max Ernst (curtain) and Joan Miró (sets and costumes)|
|1927||La chatte||Henri Sauguet||George Balanchine||Naum Gabo|
|1927||Mercure||Erik Satie||Léonide Massine||Pablo Picasso|
|1927||Pas d'acier||Sergei Prokofiev||Léonide Massine||George Jaculov|
|1928||Apollon musagète (Apollo)||Igor Stravinsky||George Balanchine||Andre Bauschant (scene)|
|Coco Chanel (costumi)|
|1929||Le fils prodigue/ Prodigal Son||Sergei Prokofiev||George Balanchine||Georges Rouault|
- Garafola (1998), p. vii.
- "Diaghilev's Golden Age of the Ballets Russes dazzles London with V&A display". Culture24. 2011-01-09. Retrieved 2013-05-08.
- Garofala (1998), p. 150
- Garofala (1998), p. 150.
- Garofala (1998), p. 438, n. 7.
- Garofala (1998), p. 151.
- Morrison, Simon. "The 'World of Art' and Music," in [Mir Iskusstva]: Russia's Age of Elegance. Palace Editions. Omaha, Minneapolis, and Princeton, 2005. p. 38.
- Guroff, Greg. "Introduction" in [Mir Iskusstva]: Russia's Age of Elegance. Palace Editions. Omaha, Minneapolis, and Princeton, 2005. p.

Les Ballets Russes
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowski
Mânuel de Falla
Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Igor Strawinsky: Le Sacre du printemps
Claude Debussy: Jeux
Paul Dukas: Fanfare pour précéder 'La Péri'
Paul Dukas: 'La Péri'
Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé
Francis Poulenc: Les Biches
Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Florent Schmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé
Igor Strawinsky: Pétrouchka
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowski: Schwanensee
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowski: Dornröschen
Mânuel de Falla: Der Dreispitz
Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew: Der Narr
Igor Strawinsky: Pulcinella
Igor Strawinsky: Feuerwerk
Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche
Maurice Ravel: La Valse
George Auric: Les Fâcheux
George Auric: La Pastorale
Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow: Schéhérazade
Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew: Ala et Lolly
Darius Milhaud: Le Train bleu
Vincenzo Tommasini: Le donne di buon umore | Les Femmes de bonne humeur
Henri Sauguet: La Chatte
Igor Strawinsky: L'Oiseau de feu
Igor Strawinsky: Apollon musagète
Les Ballets Russes was founded by director Sergei Diaghilev in 1909. The company never actually performed in Russia – it made its debut in Paris, and the world was to be its home during its 20 years of existence.

The building houses two smaller stages, the Comédie des Champs-Élysées theatre on the 3rd floor, and the Studio des Champs-Élysées on the 5th floor.
Although Astruc was soon financially overextended, the first season was extraordinary. The theatre opened on April 2, 1913, with a gala concert featuring five of France's most renowned composers conducting their own works: Claude Debussy (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune), Paul Dukas (L'apprenti sorcier), Gabriel Fauré (La naissance de Vénus), Vincent d'Indy (Le camp from Wallenstein), and Camille Saint-Saëns (Phaeton and excerpts from his choral work La lyre et la harpe). This was followed the next day with a performance of Hector Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini conducted by Felix Weingartner which included a "dance spectacular" by Anna Pavlova. Later there was a series of concerts devoted to Beethoven conducted by Weingartner and featuring the pianists Alfred Cortot and Louis Diémer, and the soprano Lilli Lehmann. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Willem Mengelberg gave two concerts: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the Paris premiere of Fauré's opera Pénélope (May 10).
Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes presented the company's fifth season, although their first in the new theatre, opening on May 15 with Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade (as choreographed by Michel Fokine), and the world premiere of Debussy's Jeux (with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and designs by Léon Bakst). Some in the audiences had been offended by the depiction on stage of a tennis game in Jeux, but this was nothing compared to the reaction to the ritual sacrifice in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on May 29. Carl Van Vechten described the scene:
A certain part of the audience was thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art, and, swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise of the curtain, to make cat-calls and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed.

The Accademia Teatro alla Scala Ballet School brings the magic of The Nutcracker to Teatro Strehler, a choreography signed by Frédéric Olivieri from Lev Ivanov (December 14-22).
Moving to the notes of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the young dancers will thrill young and old alike as they bring to life the characters populating Marius Petipa’s libretto inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
The Nutcracker was first conceived in early 1891, when the Director of the Russian Imperial Theatres of Saint Petersburg commissioned Petipa and Tchaikovsky to choreograph a two-act ballet for the Christmas season.
After meeting with the balletmaster Petipa, the composer began to work in “feverish haste”. In a letter dated February of that year, he wrote that he was working on The Nutcracker “with all my might” and the music was ready early the following year, in spite of the composer’s many bouts of depression. He had written to his brother Modest that he was «tormented by an awareness that it is totally impossible to complete well the work I have engaged myself to do». His difficult relationship with Petipa may have had something to do with this. The balletmaster dictated the score measure by measure, badgering the composer with such notes as: «The stage is empty… Clara returns. Eight measures for her tremble of fright, eight for fantastic and dance music. Rest. The clock strikes midnight. After the chimes of the clock a short tremolo. After the tremolo, five measures to hear the scratching of the mice […]».
A suite of pieces from the ballet was performed under the composer’s direction on March 19, 1892 at the Russian Musical Society’s theatre in St. Petersburg. It received unanimous acclaim, with five out of six pieces encored at its premiere. However, the opening night of the full ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in December of the same year was not so fortunate.

Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson have revived their 1981 work Relative Calm in a new extended production that world-premiered last week in Rome, Italy, at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica Ennio Morricone.
The show includes a reinterpretation of the two choreographies by Lucinda Childs to the music of John Adams and John Gibson and is extended into a triptych with a new creation on the music of Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky.
“The whole show, in its three symmetrical parts will be like a clock that measures time, like the succession of the hours of the day.” — Robert Wilson
In the mid-seventies, Robert Wilson asked Lucinda Childs to be part of his opera Einstein on the Beach, on which he was working with Philip Glass.
A few years later, in 1981, Childs asked Wilson to do the lights and design the space for a dance show she was creating with Jon Gibson at The Kitchen in New York. When they started thinking about a new work together, precisely forty years later and right in the middle of the pandemic isolation days, that 1981 show came back to their mind: Relative Calm.
They decided to extend that work and came up with the idea of choreographing Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. “I really liked the idea of Stravinsky as a central counterpoint to two musical compositions by contemporary authors such as Jon Gibson and John Adams,” Wilson says. “So we structured the work in three parts to compose a complete show of dance, music, lights, and images.”
Wilson particularly enjoyed working on Stravinsky. “Stravinsky’s is a completely different world from mine, with a different colour spectrum. Different and, therefore, structurally interesting to me. I faced Pulcinella‘s suite the same way I always relate to written compositions: I respect the composer, but then I don’t want to become his slave, so I stage it in my own way.”
For Wilson, all his theatre, in a sense, is a masque with music and text; the image on stage is what one sees, while what is heard is something different. “From this point of view, my theater is very classic,” Wilson says, “just like in Greek theater where actors were “masks”, or as in Noh theater, in the Bunraku in Japan, the Kathakali in India.

About this work
This is powerful, virtuosic piano music drawn by the composer from his great ballet score Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64. It is likely that the composer arranged it as a salvage job for a major project that appeared doomed. Before he returned to Russia permanently, Prokofiev had contracted with the State Academic Theater of Leningrad for a full-length ballet on Romeo but later canceled the production on grounds that choreographed Shakespeare was a "sacrilege."
When Radlov persuaded the Bolshoi Theater of Moscow to accept the ballet, Prokofiev continued. Bowing to the demands of "Socialist Realism," Prokofiev and Radlov even devised a "happy ending." But following the infamous Pravda denunciation of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, known to reflect Stalin's personal opinion, the Bolshoi decided to take no more chances and canceled the production.
Prokofiev sought to salvage the work he had done by making suites of the music: Two orchestral suites (Opp. 64a and 65b) and this piano suite. He performed both as widely as possible, even conducting and recording the former despite the fact that he was an unusually poor conductor. These performances had their intended secondary result: A Yugoslav ballet company liked the music and premiered the ballet in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. (The Kirov danced it in 1940, and the Bolshoi in 1946.)
Prokofiev was an outstanding piano composer who developed his own unique style of writing for the instrument. Although he wrote prolifically for piano in the early part of his career, during his Soviet period he composed only four original piano sonatas, plus five piano suites drawn from stage works.
The ten numbers Prokofiev chose for this piano version all concern the beginning of the love between Romeo and Juliet, with some additional character and ensemble dances. No. 1, "Folk Dance" (Morning Dance), and No. 2, "The Street Awakens" set the scene in Verona.
The music shifts to the depiction of the ball at the Capulets' with the "Arrival of the Guests." Meanwhile, Juliet is being dressed in her finery in "The Young Juliet." Its playful music ends in her catching sight of herself in a mirror and suddenly realizing she has become a young woman.

This piece was initially called Fandango, but its title was soon changed to "Boléro".
Premiere and early performances
The composition was a sensational success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Alexandre Benois. The orchestra of the Opéra was conducted by Walther Straram. Ernest Ansermet had originally been engaged to conduct the orchestra during its entire ballet season; however the orchestra refused to play under him. A scenario by Rubinstein and Nijinska was printed in the program for the premiere:
Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling. [In response] to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated.
Ravel himself, however, had a different conception of the work: his preferred stage design was of an open-air setting with a factory in the background, reflecting the mechanical nature of the music.
Boléro became Ravel's most famous composition, much to the surprise of the composer, who had predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play it. It is usually played as a purely orchestral work, only rarely being staged as a ballet. According to a possibly apocryphal story, at the premiere a woman shouted that Ravel was mad. When told about this, Ravel smiled and remarked that she had understood the piece. The piece was first published by the Parisian firm Durand in 1929. Arrangements of the piece were made for piano solo and piano duet (two people playing at one piano), and Ravel himself composed a version for two pianos, published in 1930.
The first recording was made by Piero Coppola in Paris for The Gramophone Company on January 8, 1930. The recording session was attended by Ravel. The very next day Ravel made his own recording for Polydor, conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra. That same year further recordings were made by Serge Koussevitzky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Willem Mengelberg with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
The Toscanini affair
Conductor Arturo Toscanini gave the U.S. premiere of Boléro with the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1929.

Recommended Recording: Hillary Hahn; Esa-Pekka Salonen, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)
Born 1 October 1865 in Paris, France; Died 17 May 1935 in Paris
Premiere: April 22, 1912; Paris
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tambourine, triangle, xylophone), 2 harps, celeste, strings
Approximate Duration: 19 minutes
Nowadays, Paul Dukas is most often remembered for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that perennial favorite of young peoples’ concerts. (And who can forget the images of Mickey Mouse and water-toting broomsticks in Walt Disney’s Fantasia?) Perhaps one of the reasons we don’t hear a lot Dukas’ music is that he didn’t leave us much. Meticulous to a fault, some might say, the composer relegated most of his compositions to the fireplace. In fact, La Péri almost suffered the same fate: Composed “for a bet,” it was spared only by the intervention of several respected friends, who begged Dukas not to destroy the manuscript.
Dukas studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where Debussy was a friend and fellow student. He cultivated his musical craftsmanship to a high degree and developed an ear for orchestral color that made his work particularly influential in that regard. He was also a music writer, professor, critic, and editor. In the latter role, he made important contributions to the catalog of the Durand publishing house, creating well-considered editions of the keyboard works of Beethoven, Scarlatti, Couperin, and Rameau. In addition to those already mentioned, his surviving works include the three-movement Symphony in C, an ambitious piano sonata, and the opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, among others.
For his only ballet – he called it a poème dansé (danced poem) – Dukas turned to an ancient Persian legend. In Persian mythology, a péri is a fairy creature.

The orchestra played unheard, except occasionally when a slight lull occurred. The young man seated behind me in the box stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time.
Marie Rambert heard someone in the gallery call out: "Un docteur … un dentiste … deux docteurs…." The second performance (June 4) was less eventful, and, according to Maurice Ravel, the entire work could actually be heard.
The first season ended on June 26, 1913, with a performance of Pénélope, and the new one opened on October 2 with the same work. On October 9 d'Indy conducted Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz. On October 15 Debussy conducted the Ibéria section from his orchestral triptych Images pour orchestre, and a week later he conducted his cantata La Damoiselle élue. By November 20 Astruc was out of money and was ejected from the theatre, and the sets and costumes were impounded. The following season consisted of operas presented by Covent Garden and the Boston Opera Company.
During most of World War I, the theatre was closed, but the Congress of Allied Women on War Service was held there in August 1918. Pavlova's ballet company presented a short season of dance performances in 1919.
The theatre was purchased by Madame Ganna Walska (Mrs. Harold Fowler McCormick) in 1922. From 1923 the smaller Comédie stage upstage was the home of Louis Jouvet's long-running medical satire, Dr. Knock, and in late 1924 the theatre also premiered the Ballets suédois production of Francis Picabia's "instantaneist" ballet Relâche, with music by Erik Satie.
The theatre shows about three staged opera productions a year, mostly baroque or chamber works, suited to the modest size of its stage and orchestra pit. In addition, it houses an important concert season.

In spite of the ballet’s time length, a small number of musical leitmotifs gives musical unity to the score.The music, some of the composer’s most passionate, is widely regarded as some of Ravel’s best, with extraordinarily lush harmonies typical of the impressionist movement in music. Even during the composer’s lifetime, contemporary commentators described this ballet as his masterpiece for orchestra.He extracted music from the ballet to make two orchestral suites, which can be performed with or without the chorus. The second of the suites, which includes much of the last part of the ballet and concludes with the “Danse generale”, is particularly popular. When the complete work is itself performed live, it is more often in concerts than in staged productions.
Performed by:Philharmonia Orchestra
Artwork :Remedios Varo “Revelation or The Clockmaker”.

- Alexander Scriabin, Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Moscow, March 2, 1911
- Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Paris, October 19, 1922
- Sergei Prokofiev, First Violin Concerto with Marcel Darrieux as soloist, Paris, October 18, 1923
- Prokofiev, Second Symphony, Paris, June 6, 1925
- Prokofiev, Fourth Symphony, Boston, November 14, 1930
- George Gershwin, Second Rhapsody, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Boston, 29 January 1932
- Béla Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Boston, December 1, 1944
- Samuel Barber, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Eleanor Steber as soloist, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1948
- Leonard Bernstein, The Age of Anxiety, Leonard Bernstein as soloist, Tanglewood, 1949
- Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring (suite) Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1945
- Arnold Bax, Symphony No.2, Boston, December 13, 1929
- Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Boston Symphony Orchestra, October 1930
- Jean Sibelius, Seventh Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, HMV, London, 1933
- Roy Harris, Third Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1939
- Hector Berlioz, Harold in Italy with William Primrose as soloist, 1946
- Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring (suite), Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1946
Notes and references
- Koussevitzky's original Russian forename is usually transliterated into English as either "Sergei" or "Sergey"; however, he himself adopted the French spelling "Serge", using it in his signature. (See The Koussevitzky Music Foundations official web site. Retrieved 2009-11-05.) His surname can be transliterated variously as "Koussevitzky", "Koussevitsky", "Kussevitzky", "Kusevitsky", or, into Polish, as "Kusewicki"; however, he himself chose to use "Koussevitzky".

Prokofiev's inexperience in ballet led him to revise the work extensively in the 1920s, following Diaghilev's detailed critique, prior to its first production. The ballet's premiere in Paris on 17 May 1921 was a huge success and was greeted with great admiration by an audience that included Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Stravinsky called the ballet "the single piece of modern music he could listen to with pleasure," while Ravel called it "a work of genius."
First World War and Revolution:
During World War I, Prokofiev returned to the Conservatory. He studied organ in order to avoid conscription. He composed The Gambler based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, but rehearsals were plagued by problems and the scheduled 1917 première had to be canceled because of the February Revolution. In the summer of that year, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the Classical. This was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time. It is more or less classical in style but incorporates more modern musical elements (see Neoclassicism). This symphony was also an exact contemporary of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was scheduled to premiere in November 1917. The first performances of both works had to wait until 21 April 1918 and 18 October 1923, respectively. He stayed briefly with his mother in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. Worried about the enemy capturing Saint Petersburg, he returned in 1918. By then he was determined to leave Russia, at least temporarily. He saw no room for his experimental music and, in May, he headed for the USA. Before leaving, he developed acquaintances with senior Bolsheviks including Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, who told him: "You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way."

"I am now gradually orchestrating it", we read in a letter to Nadezhda von Meck of 8/20–10/22 October 1880, and later: "The Serenade... I composed from an innate impulse; that is something which arises from having freedom to think, and is not devoid of true worth" .
By 14/26 October the Serenade was ready, and Tchaikovsky set to work on its arrangement for piano duet , which according to the date on the manuscript was completed on 23 October/4 November 1880. Despatching the score and piano duet arrangement to Pyotr Jurgenson to be published, Tchaikovsky wrote: "I happened to write a Serenade for string orchestra in four movements, and am sending it to you the day after tomorrow in the form of a full score and four-hand arrangement ... I love this Serenade terribly, and fervently hope that it might soon see the light of day" .
As noted above, Tchaikovsky's arrangement of the Serenade for piano duet (4 hands) was made between 14/26 October and 23 October/4 November 1880.
The Serenade was performed for the first time on 21 November/3 December 1880 at a private concert in the Moscow Conservatory by a force of professors and students, as a surprise for Tchaikovsky, who was visiting after long absence from the Conservatory .
On 17/29 June 1881, Tchaikovsky wrote to Eduard Nápravník, asking if the Serenade might be included in one of the future concerts . In his reply of 27 June/9 July that year, Nápravník agreed to perform the Serenade in one of the forthcoming concerts .
The first public performance of the Serenade for String Orchestra took place in Saint Petersburg on 18/30 October 1881, at the third symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society, conducted by Eduard Nápravník. In Moscow it was performed for the first time on 16/28 January 1882 at the seventh concert of the Russian Musical Society, conducted by Max Erdmannsdörfer.
Other notable early performances include:
- Tiflis, 2nd Russian Musical Society symphony concert, 27 March/8 April 1884, conducted by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
- New York,

But Miami City Ballet isn’t just devoted to presenting the work of Balanchine. The ballet company has also performed pieces by many other choreographers over the years.
The upcoming Ted Shawn Theatre program will feature Martha Graham’s poetic 1948 piece “Diversion of Angels” as well as the world premiere of Margarita Armas’ “Geta.”
The program also includes Jerome Robbins’ “Antique Epigraphs,” which was first performed in 1984 by New York City Ballet. Inspired by ancient Greek sculptural forms, this ensemble work is set to the orchestral music of Claude Debussy, which you can hear performed lived at Jacob’s Pillow.
But perhaps the highlight of Miami City Ballet’s program will be their performance of George Balanchine’s “Serenade.” One of the first ballets created by Balanchine in the United States in 1935, “Serenade” features Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s melodic Serenade for Strings in C.
Nearly a century later, “Serenade” seems timeless with his graceful gestures and symmetrical movements. Often, the dancers seem to float across the stage, drifting like leaves in a breeze being swept up by Tchaikovsky’s melodious music. If you love classic ballet, this piece will melt your heart.
And best of all, you can see “Serenade” performed by one of Balanchine’s best interpreters featuring a live orchestra in the best dance venue in the world.

The turbulent premiere was followed by five more relatively peaceful performances before one show in London, which received mixed reviews, but the complete ballet and orchestral work were only performed seven times before the outbreak of the first world war.
After the fighting ended, Diaghilev attempted to revive The Rite of Spring, but found nobody remembered the choreography. By then Nijinsky, the greatest dancer of his generation, was in mental decline.
Since then The Rite has been adapted for and included in an estimated 150 productions around the world including gangster films, a punk rock interpretation, a nightmarish vision of Aboriginal Australia by Kenneth MacMillan, and Walt Disney's 1940s film Fantasia. A commemorative performance was staged at the Royal Albert Hall in London to mark the 50th anniversary of the premiere.
To mark this year's centenary of The Rite of Spring, described by Leonard Bernstein as the most important piece of music of the 20th century, both Sony and Universal have released box sets reprising the best versions in their back catalogues.

This was the question I was left asking at the end of the first piece on the MCB program, Ballo della Regina, which is actually the most recent of the works, dating from 1978, and set to music from the Verdi opera Don Carlos. It is light and fast, filled with dazzling leaps by the male soloist (Renato Penteado) and complex variations by the all-female corps (including featured soloist Nathalia Arja, who does have a killer arabesque). But choreographed so assiduously to the music, the work comes off as a series of highly presentational interludes more than a self-sustaining whole, with the completion of a difficult or particularly acrobatic move, punctuated as it is by the score, not just craving, but demanding appreciation. It's an older version of showmanship in ballet that seems out of place in today's world--as evidenced by the confusion of the audience about when and with what measure of enthusiasm to applaud.
I much preferred the second work on the program. Symphony in Three Movements was choreographed by Balanchine in 1972 as a tribute to Igor Stravinsky, who had died the previous year. Set to a score that the composer had written in 1945 as a commemoration of the end of WW II, the movement features striking diagonal machine-like formations and opposing windmill arm turns by the corps, recalling the wings of bomber planes (and, to be sure, the female riveters who built them). One also detects the influence of Balanchine's NYCB confrère, Jerome Robbins, especially in the Jets and Sharks-influenced jumps of the male dancers. Finally, at the centre of the piece is a beautifully spare and simple duet that the program notes indicate was influenced by traditional Balinese dance. It begins with the male dancer positioned behind his female partner; as she bobs down, he pops up, the two of them syncopating this action with corresponding arm waves, as if they are swimming.
The evening concluded with the oldest piece on the program, Serenade, choreographed (in 1934) soon after Balanchine had emigrated to the US, and set on students from his newly formed School of American Ballet.

Prokofiev's inexperience in ballet led him to revise the work extensively in the 1920s, following Diaghilev's detailed critique, prior to its first production. The ballet's premiere in Paris on 17 May 1921 was a huge success and was greeted with great admiration by an audience that included Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Stravinsky called the ballet "the single piece of modern music he could listen to with pleasure," while Ravel called it "a work of genius."
First World War and Revolution
During World War I, Prokofiev returned to the Conservatory. He studied organ in order to avoid conscription. He composed The Gambler based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, but rehearsals were plagued by problems and the scheduled 1917 première had to be canceled because of the February Revolution. In the summer of that year, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the Classical. This was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time. It is more or less classical in style but incorporates more modern musical elements (see Neoclassicism). This symphony was also an exact contemporary of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was scheduled to premiere in November 1917. The first performances of both works had to wait until 21 April 1918 and 18 October 1923, respectively. He stayed briefly with his mother in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. Worried about the enemy capturing Saint Petersburg, he returned in 1918. By then he was determined to leave Russia, at least temporarily. He saw no room for his experimental music and, in May, he headed for the USA. Before leaving, he developed acquaintances with senior Bolsheviks including Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, who told him: "You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way."

2 (1909) and Four Pieces, Op. 4 (1908) are highly chromatic and dissonant works. He composed his first two piano concertos around this time, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in rapture.
In 1911, help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a supportive letter to music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson, thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first foreign trip in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
The first ballets:
In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the so-called 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schreder grand piano: Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli, but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915. Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout (The Fool, the original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего (Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshavo), meaning "The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons"). Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario.

A note from Afa Sadykhly Dworkin, Executive and Artistic Director: This year’s theme represents a figurative dialogue, showcasing a selection of great gems from two eras (baroque and contemporary), while accenting the program with works by composers of color. The architecture of the program pays homage to great 20th century composers who were either deeply interested in baroque or had a tangible connection to it. We invite you to experience Perkinson’s ingenious use of baroque elements and consider Piazzolla’s early devotion to Bach, topped off by Britten’s Simple Symphony, Opus 4, a suite of dances common to the baroque era in their form.
Montgomery, Strum (Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence)
Strum is the culminating result of several versions of a string quintet I wrote in 2006. It was originally written for the Providence String Quartet and guests of Community MusicWorks Players, and then arranged for string quartet in 2008 with several small revisions. In 2012 the piece underwent its final revisions with a rewrite of both the introduction and the ending for the Catalyst Quartet in a performance celebrating the 15th annual Sphinx Competition. Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.
Piazzolla, Tango No. 1 “Coral”
Piazzolla, Tango No. 2 “Cantengue”
Astor Piazzolla was an Argentinean composer and a virtuoso bandoneon player, who revolutionized and reinvented the tango, making it ever appealing, relevant and popular among the classical, world, jazz and other genres.

Ballet de cour in twenty entrées with text by I. de Benserade and P. Quinault, music by Lully, production and choreography by Beauchamps and Pécour, and designs by J. Bérain. Premiered 21 Jan. 1681 at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with Beauchamps as Mars and Pécour in various entrées. The ladies and gentlemen of the court provided the rest of the cast in this baroque extravaganza. The work's finale celebrated Love as the ruler of both gods and men. Four months after its premiere, a performance (at the Paris Palais Royal) featured the first appearance of a professional ballerina, Mlle Lafontaine. Harald Lander staged a new version for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1962.

The solo Angel created for Manuel Legris by Renato Zanella was premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper in 1999. He also performed in Manon with the Wiener Staatsopernballett during a guest appearance in Madrid in 2000. Manuel Legris has also made guest appearances with foreign ballet companies at the Wiener Staatsoper: in 1989 with the Tokyo Ballet, in 2000 with the Paris Opéra Ballet during “ImPulsTanz”. During guest appearances by the Paris Opéra Ballet at other Viennese theatres, he danced in TANZ ’86 at the Theater an der Wien in 1986 and at the Burgtheater as part of “ImPulsTanz” in 2005.
In 2008 he performed in the “ImPulsTanz” ballet gala at the Burgtheater. In 2012 at the Burgtheater he presented the gala Manuel Legris & Guests for this festival in which he also performed. In the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2001 New Year’s Concert, he danced a solo choreographed by Zanella. Recent performances include The Bat in Peking (National Ballet of China), Pas de deux from Onegin (Gala Tokyo Ballet, 50 years jubilee) and an appearance at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
In his first season as Director of the Wiener Staatsballett, Manuel Legris presented altogether eight premieres, five at the Wiener Staatsoper, and three at the Volksoper Wien. For the enormous successful premiere of Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Don Quixote Manuel Legris himself was responsible for the staging. In his second season together with Elisabeth Plated he staged Pierre Lacotte’s La Sylphide, in the season 2012/2013 he produced Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker and in the 2013/2014 season Swan Lake. At the multi-part evening Junge Talente des Wiener Staatsballetts at the Volksoper Wien his choreography Donizetti Pas de deux was presented.
As dancer he appeared at the Wiener Staatsoper at the opening ceremony of the Vienna Opera Ball 2011.

Like Stravinsky, Glazunov made his first recording in London; but
unlike the younger composer, it was not to lead to a further series of
discs. In his memoirs, Columbia producer Joe Batten recalled the Seasons
recording sessions under Glazunov’s direction: “Here is a far too
seldom played suite of happy music. It was recorded at the old Portman
Rooms in Baker Street. I shall never forget meeting him, tall, elderly,
so ill and frail with gout and rheumatism that I wondered if he could
stand the physical strain of three or four hours of intensive recording
But he did and produced a performance of sheer beauty.”
None of the frailness described is evident in this energetic and stylish reading, but only some of the beauty survives on the issued discs. Recorded over three sessions, at least two different engineering approaches were used: one which favored a warm, bass-full sound, and the other which was treble-oriented almost to the point of shrillness. Despite its drawbacks, it remains invaluable as the only recording the composer ever made.
The sources for the transfers were American Columbia pressings: “Viva-Tonal” copies for the Glazunov; a “Full-Range” label edition for Pulcinella; and a large label, post-“Viva” pressing with patches from a laminated French Columbia copy for Petrushka.
STRAVINSKY Petrushka – Ballet Suite (1911)
Symphony Orchestra ∙ Igor Stravinsky
Recorded 27 – 28 June 1928 in London
Matrix nos.: WAX 3867/72
First issued as Columbia L 2173/5
STRAVINSKY Pulcinella – Ballet Suite (1920)
Walther Straram Concert Orchestra ∙ Igor Stravinsky
Recorded 6 May 1932 & 12 November 1928 in the Studio Albert and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris
Matrix nos.: WLX 1605/6 & WLX 626/7
First issued on French Columbia LFX 289 & D 15126
GLAZUNOV The Seasons – Ballet in 1 Act, Op.

Fortunately he had started making a name for himself as a composer, although he frequently caused scandals with his forward-looking works. The Sarcasms for piano, Op. 17 (1912), for example, make extensive use of polytonality, and Etudes, Op. 2 (1909) and Four Pieces, Op. 4 (1908) are highly chromatic and dissonant works. He composed his first two piano concertos around this time, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in rapture.
In 1911 help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a supportive letter to music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson, thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first foreign trip in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
The first ballets
In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the so-called 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schreder grand piano: Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli, but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915. Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout. Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario.

There he performed several of his more adventurous piano works, such as his highly chromatic and dissonant Etudes, Op. 2 (1909). His performance of it impressed the organisers of the Evenings sufficiently for them to invite Prokofiev to give the Russian premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11. Prokofiev's harmonic experimentation continued with Sarcasms for piano, Op. 17 (1912), which makes extensive use of polytonality. He composed his first two piano concertos around then, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in rapture.
In 1911, help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a supportive letter to music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson (son of publishing-firm founder Peter Jurgenson [1836–1904]); thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first foreign trip in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the so-called 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schreder grand piano: Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli; but when Prokofiev brought the work in progress to him in Italy in 1915 he rejected it as "non-Russian".

Joseph, professor emeritus of music at Skidmore, is the author of four books on the
life and music of Igor Stravinsky, including Stravinsky’s Ballets (2012, Yale Music Masterworks). Joseph won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his book
Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention.
Wentink, curator of special collections and college archives at Middlebury, was manuscript archivist at the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for seven years. He is a writer, editor, dance and film historian who also teaches, including courses on “Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the Creation of Modern Culture” and “From George Washington to John Travolta: Social Dance in American Popular Culture.”
Ballets Russes: A transformative company
The Ballets Russes, a traveling Russian ballet company, was one of the most innovative ballet companies of the 20th century. Director Sergei Diaghilev transformed the standard of ballet to focus not only on the technique, but also on the expressiveness of movements. He departed from the classical form of a corps de ballet, placing importance on individual dancers and including more lead male dancers. The pieces that Diaghilev directed illustrated one consistent theme; his collaborations with set designers and musicians created a more cohesive and powerful performance.
The Skidmore program features elements that will be familiar to Saratoga-area ballet audiences. The first piece, Les Sylphides, choreographed by Michel Fokine with music by Frédéric Chopin, is a one-act, plotless Romantic ballet — a ballet of mood. This enchanting piece includes dancers dressed as white-clad sylphs — mythological airy sprits — dancing under the moonlight with a young male poet. Les Sylphides is noted for its romantic Chopin waltzes, including the Waltz in G-flat major, the Waltz in C-sharp minor, and the Grande Valse Brillante in E-flat major.
The second piece, L’Apres-midi d’un Faune, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky with music by Debussy, is one of the first modern ballets that became known for its controversial eroticism and its rejection of classical formalism.

(Nineteenth-century composers were fascinated by these tales: Robert Schumann, no less, wrote a large-scale oratorio called Das Paradies und de Peri.) In Dukas’ scenario, the young prince Iskender is journeying far and wide in search of the lotus flower that will grant immortality. He encounters a beautiful péri, sleeping in a jewel-bedecked bower with the lotus in her hand. Gazing upon her, Iskender falls in love. Without waking her, the prince snatches the flower, but when she awakens she performs the dance of the péris. At the climax of the dance, Iskender returns the lotus in exchange for a kiss. The fairy then melts into the glowing light of sunset and Iskender realizes he has lost her forever. He feels the darkness surround him, knowing that his end is near.
In crafting his many-hued musical setting, Dukas pulled out all the stops, creating a tour de force of Impressionist orchestral color and technique. The score is a rich tapestry of elegant, wispy effects and deliciously opulent instrumental shadings. Two themes engage in a drama of confrontation, like Iskender and La Péri. Much of the piece portrays the impassioned dance of the Péri. The popular fanfare that opens the work, often excerpted, bears no thematic relationship to the ballet itself. Added as an afterthought, it might have been a signal to audiences of the day to quiet down before the soft opening of the main body of the poème.
The composer dedicated La Péri, his last published work, to Natalie Trouhanova, the Russian ballerina who danced the title role at its Paris premiere in 1912. The stage was decorated with golden mountains, crimson valleys, and trees laden with silver fruit. The evening also included the premieres of three other ballets – by Maurice Ravel, Vincent d’Indy, and Florent Schmitt, each conducted by its composer.
Recommended Recording: Jesús López-Cobos, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Telarc)
Born 17 June 1882 in Lomonosov, Russia; Died 6 April 1971 in New York City, New York
Composed: 1909-1910; rev.

2) (1941)
- Concerto Barocco (1941)
For the Ballet del Teatro de Colón
- Mozart Violin Concerto (1942)
For Ballet Theatre
- Waltz Academy (1944)
- Theme and Variations (1947)
For Ballet Society
- The Four Temperaments (1946)
- L'enfant et Les Sortilèges (The Spellbound Child) (1946)
- Haieff Divertimento (1947)
- Symphonie Concertante (1947)
- Orpheus (1948)
For the Paris Opera Ballet
- Pas de Trois Classique (also known as Minkus Pas de Trois) (1948)
For New York City Ballet
- La Sonnambula (1946)
- Bourrée Fantasque (1949)
- The Firebird (1949; later revised with Jerome Robbins)
- Sylvia Pas De Deux (1950)
- Swan Lake (after Lev Ivanov) (1951)
- La Valse (1951)
- Harlequinade Pas De Deux (1952)
- Metamorphoses (1952)
- Scotch Symphony (1952)
- Valse Fantaisie (1953/1967)
- The Nutcracker (1954)
- Ivesiana (1954)
- Western Symphony (1954)
- Glinka Pas De Trois (1955)
- Pas De Dix (1955)
- Divertimento No. 15 (1956)
- Allegro Brillante (1956)
- Agon (1957)
- Square Dance (1957)
- Gounod Symphony (1958)
- Stars and Stripes (a ballet in five "campaigns") (1958)
- Episodes (1959)
- Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960)
- Monumentum pro Gesualdo (1960)
- Donizetti Variations (1960)
- Liebeslieder Walzer (1960)
- Raymonda Variations (1961)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962)
- Bugaku (1963)
- Meditation (1963)
- Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1963)
- Harlequinade (1965)
- Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966)
- Jewels (1967)
- La Source (1968)
- Who Cares?

The Firebird (1910) was seen as an astonishingly accomplished work for such a young artist (Debussy is said to have remarked drily: "Well, you've got to start somewhere!"). Many contemporary audiences found Petrushka (1911) to be almost unbearably dissonant and confused. The Rite of Spring nearly caused an audience riot. It stunned people because of its willful rhythms and aggressive dynamics. The audience's negative reaction to it is now regarded as a theatrical scandal as notorious as the failed runs of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser at Paris in 1861 and Jean-Georges Noverre's and David Garrick's Chinese Ballet at London on the eve of the Seven Years' War. However, Stravinsky's early ballet scores are now widely considered masterpieces of the genre. Even his later ballet scores (such as Apollo), while not as startling, were still superior to most ballet music of the previous century.[according to whom?]
Summary of contributions
- The male dancer returns.
- Expressiveness: work was not just solely about technique or divertissements as found in classical ballet
- Movement vocabulary freed
- Individuals were important rather than a corps de ballet of classical form
- Unified theme: pieces were often one act, and always sought to express a single theme throughout the piece
- Collaboration: Choreographers and dancers collaborated with set designers and musicians in order to create pieces
- Reflection of Russian taste, themes (idea of developing Russian art, rather than importing western art and influence)
Film of a performance
Diaghilev always maintained that no camera could ever do justice to the artistry of his dancers, and it was long believed there was no film legacy of the Ballets Russes. However, in 2011 a 30-second newsreel film of a performance in Montreux, Switzerland, in June 1928 came to light. The ballet was Les Sylphides and the lead dancer has been identified as Serge Lifar.
When Sergei Diaghilev died of diabetes in Venice on 19 August 1929, the Ballets Russes was left with substantial debts, its property was claimed by its creditors, and the company of dancers dispersed.

In 2001, he created Les Larmes de Marco Polo for the Lyon International Biennial.
In 2002, he created 99 duos at the Chaillot National Theatre, the first part of a trilogy on ‘People’. In 2003, he prepared Trois générations for the Avignon Festival, which was eventually cancelled. The piece, which includes children, former dancers and the Company, was performed at the Rampe d’Echirolles in March 2004.
It was performed in May of the same year at the Chaillot National Theatre and was repeated in November 2005. The same year, he worked with the director Hans-Peter Cloos to produce a show combining dance, theatre and music, Les sept pechés capitaux by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. In 2006, he created Des Gens qui dansent, the third part of the trilogy initiated by 99 duos and Trois Générations and, in 2007, he repeated his flagship piece from the 80s, Ulysse, under the title Cher Ulysse.
In 2008, Bach danse experience with Mirella Giardelli and “L’Atelier des Musiciens du Louvre”; Armide by Lully with the conductor William Christie and the director Robert Carsen at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris; Chroniques chorégraphiques - season 1, a sort of “stage movie” that allowed him to pursue his poetic research into genres and people.
In 2009, he created l’Homme à tête de chou, with the original words and music by Serge Gainsbourg in a version recorded for the show by Alain Bashung. In April 2011, he performed a solo with Faut qu’je danse ! as a prelude to the recreation of his trio Daphnis é Chloé in Grenoble.
In October 2011, again in Grenoble and with a piece for thirteen dancers, he took on Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which he presented in April 2012 at the Chaillot National Theatre, Paris, along with Tumulte and Pour Igor in the first part.

Stravinsky - COE - BBC Music Magazine
25 November 2009BBC Music Magazine
It takes an exceptional release these days to get away with a length of as little as 54 minutes. But then the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is a rather special ensemble, retaining 18 of the pioneering young artists who originally set it up in 1981 complemented by the front desk players from all over the European Union. The result is a wonderfully characterful wind section plus a string body of vibrant unanimity and warmth. These qualities are enhanced by the church acoustic in which these sessions took place, yet skilful microphone placement has ensured that not a detail is lost.
The COE's leader Alexander Janiczek directs these readings from the first violin. In Stravinsky's ballet blanc for string orchestra, Apollon musagete (1928), he steers a middle way between the suave smoothness of the Karajan approach and the edgy haste Stravinsky's own later readings tended to take on. Tempos are moderate, but there is no lack of spring to the rhythms while the opening of the ‘Pas de Deux' is mesmerising in its translucent poise.
The Suite from the Baroque make-over Pulcinella (1920) is an altogether livelier, gutsier affair as delivered here, with a terrific rhythmic snap to the finale. What a pity not to record the entire ballet with this outstanding élan. The disc could have contained it.
Related LinksChamber Orchestra of EuropeStravinsky Apollon musagète & Pulcinella Suite

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||Pervenches, 8 Miniatures for Piano
||Periwinkles . Pièces enfantines.
|Opus/Catalogue NumberOp./Cat. No.
|I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No.
- Devant l'eglise
- Au travail
- Par un matin ensoleillé
- Après le théâtre
- Danse russe
- Digui-don (Jeu d'enfant)
|Year/Date of CompositionY/D of Comp.
|Composer Time PeriodComp. Period
Published 1942 by Belaieff according to Hofmeister's Monatsbericht (1942), p.24.