Suite from ‘The Firebird’ (1919)

Program notes

About the Work

The Firebird made Stravinsky famous overnight. In 1910, still in his twenties and almost unknown, he was given the chance of a lifetime when Sergei Diaghilev commissioned him to write a ballet for the Ballets Russes in Paris. Drawing on Russian fairy tales, The Firebird tells of Prince Ivan, who captures the magical, glowing Firebird, wins her aid, and uses it to defeat the immortal ogre Kashchei and free the captive princesses. The Paris premiere was a sensation, and at a stroke Stravinsky became the most exciting young composer in Europe. It was the first step on a road that would lead, within three years, to the epoch-making Rite of Spring.

The full ballet is long, and Stravinsky later distilled it into concert suites; the most popular is this 1919 version, which gathers the score’s greatest moments into about twenty minutes for a somewhat reduced orchestra. It captures the whole arc of the drama, from the shimmering enchantment of Kashchei’s garden to the blazing triumph of the finale, and it remains one of the most dazzling orchestral showpieces ever written, the sound of a young genius discovering the full splendour of the modern orchestra.

What to Listen For

The suite opens in darkness and mystery: low, slithering strings conjure the enchanted garden of the ogre Kashchei. Then the Firebird herself appears: listen for the flickering, darting woodwind and string writing that depicts her magical flight and dance, music of glittering, restless brilliance.

A gentler episode follows, the ‘Round Dance of the Princesses,’ with a tender, folk-like melody on the oboe and strings. Then comes the suite’s showstopper: the ‘Infernal Dance of King Kashchei,’ which erupts with a shattering chord and hurls the whole orchestra into a savage, syncopated frenzy of pounding, off-balance rhythms that point straight toward The Rite of Spring. After this violence, the ‘Berceuse’ (Lullaby) brings deep calm, a hushed bassoon melody over rocking strings. And then the Finale: a solo horn intones a noble, hymn-like Russian tune that grows, gradually and gloriously, into a radiant full-orchestra apotheosis, building through a broad, irregular seven-beat rhythm to one of the most thrilling final pages in the repertoire.