Stravinsky – Suite from The Firebird

Although interested in music from an early age, Stravinsky enrolled at St. Petersburg University to study law, which was considered a more reliable career path – ironically, even by his father, who enjoyed a suc­cess­ful career as a bass-baritone after studying law himself.  While at St. Petersburg, Stravinsky befriended the youngest son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russia’s most widely celebrated living composer at the turn of the twentieth century and also its most respected teacher.  Through his relation­ship with the son, Stravinsky came to know the great composer, who eventually agreed to take on the young upstart as a student, outside of the potentially intimidating setting of the Conservatory.  From Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky learned traditional harmony and form, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov’s com­mand of orchestration; his earliest orchestral works, including a substantial symphony, reveal the clear influence of his teacher.

 

Stravinsky’s progress as a composer reached a crossroads when Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908.  Already growing dissatisfied with the conserva­tive voice he had inherited from his teacher, he had explored more progressive approaches to tonality and tried to move away from the publicly held romantic notion that a work of art should reveal something of the soul of its creator.  But these tendencies had not met with great favor from either Rimsky-Korsakov or newspaper critics, and it was becoming difficult for Stravinsky to follow his inner voice without some positive reinforcement.

 

The break that changed the young composer’s life came from the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev.  Diaghilev ran the Ballet Russes in Paris and had come to know of Stra­vinsky’s music through some of his early compositions, even hiring him for a couple of minor projects.  Critical reaction to the Ballet’s 1909 season convinced Diaghi­lev that he needed to collaborate with a composer whose music would be heard as fresh, modern, and exotic.  After determining that he would commission a new ballet to the opulent Russian fairly tale of “The Firebird,” he made some inquiries and settled on Stravinsky as the composer.  Stravinsky’s music combined folk elements with cutting-edge harmonic and rhythmic elements, as well as his mastery of traditional Russian orchestration with trends in French impressionistic writing.  In spite of some rough moments in the early rehearsals, the premiere in June 1910 was an enormous success, and Stravinsky became an overnight celebrity.  Although The Firebird ends up as a rela­tively conservative piece overall, Stravinsky made dramatic leaps for­ward with his next two Diaghilev collabora­tions, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring, with The Rite universally identified as the pivotal work in all of twentieth-century music.

 

The suite that Stravinsky prepared in 1919 features about half of the full ballet’s 45 minutes of music and also revises the orchestration.  The central character of the ballet is the young prince Ivan Tsarevich, who in the Introduction is wandering through the gar­den of the evil King Kastcheï.  Ivan is in pursuit of the mystical firebird and ends the bird’s dance by catching her, but after securing one of her magic feathers, Ivan sets the bird free.  Next a group of princesses enter the garden, but they find them­selves trapped there due to one of Kastcheï’s evil spells.  Kastcheï’s monsters are closing in on Ivan and threatening to capture him, but he remembers his magic feather and waves it, sum­moning the firebird herself (in music not included in this suite).  The fire­bird casts a spell against Kastcheï and his subjects, sending them into the dizzying Infer­nal Dance, after which they collapse exhausted.  They are lulled into a deep sleep in the Berceuse and Kastcheï is destroyed, leading to the glorious Finale in which all are returned to freedom.

 

2003-04 PCO repertoire