Stravinsky: Firebird Suite
Composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971)
“Impresario” isn’t a word you hear thrown around very much anymore. On balance, that’s probably a good thing: as the performing arts world has grown more professionalized and more stable, impresarios have been replaced by staffs who divide labor manageably and, crucially, see to it that everyone from musicians to stage managers actually gets paid at the end of the week. So the impresario – a single, visionary figure who conceives of a work, hires the artists who will make it and the performers and personnel who will stage it, and sells the tickets – has largely fallen into extinction.
But the greatest of the impresarios were significant figures in the history of the arts, and among impresarios few could claim to be the equal of Sergei Diaghilev.
In the first decades of the 20th Century Diaghilev ran the Ballets Russes, a company of Russian dancers and musicians that performed all over Europe except in their politically and economically unstable native country. The Ballets Russes brought together musicians like Debussy and Prokofiev, artists like Picasso and Matisse, dancers like Nijinsky, and costumers like Coco Chanel to create new works that pushed the edge of ballet’s possibilities. Based on and off in Paris, the Ballets Russes swung wildly from spectacular artistic and popular success to crashing financial failure and back, and over the course of two decades utterly remade the performing arts in Europe.
The Firebird was perhaps the first of Diaghilev’s truly great achievements. After a successful first season in Paris in 1909, Diaghilev decided to produce a grand ballet on the Russian folktale of noble Prince Ivan, the wicked magician-king Kashchei, and the magical Firebird that helps Ivan defeat the king. You can’t have a ballet without music, and Diaghilev set out to find a composer with the orchestrational brilliance of Rimsky-Korsakov and the rhythmic inventiveness of the avant-garde who was still young and unknown enough that he’d work for cheap. He settled on Igor Stravinsky, one of Rimsky’s last students and the son of a noted Russian opera singer. Stravinsky was brilliant, ambitious, and – knowing an opportunity when he saw it – was willing to work for cheap.
On May 28, 1910, Stravinsky supplied Diaghilev with almost 60 minutes’ worth of ballet music, and on June 25 The Firebird premiered in Paris and was a sensational success. The pair followed up with Petrushka in 1911 and The Rite of Spring in 1913, and while WWI interrupted the work of the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky’s international reputation was well and truly made.
After the war Stravinsky returned to his music for the The Firebird, extracting several chunks for concert performance. The 1919 Firebird Suite has ever since been among the most popular 20th Century orchestral pieces, its intricate orchestrational details challenging orchestras as the same time that its rhythmic vitality and melodic color thrill audiences.
The 1919 Suite sets the mood with a spooky, nocturnal introduction, before the Firebird bursts onto the stage with a scintillating dance. The serene Round of the Princesses is contrasted by the syncopated, terrifying vigor of Kashchei’s Infernal Dance. In the Berceuse a slinky, hypnotic bassoon solo charms the evil king to sleep, and finally a memorable, noble tune in the horn provides the work a glorious Finale. Like its composer, The Firebird is musically immortal – and none of it could have happened without Diaghilev, the man behind the scenes who made it all happen.
See a performance
Hear The Firebird (Ballet Suite)
Chris Vaneman is the Director of the Petrie School of Music and Associate Professor of Flute at Converse College. Chris frequently leads the Spartanburg Philharmonic pre-concert lecture series “Classical Conversations,” and occasionally performs as a substitute flutist in the orchestra.