Stravinsky meets Debussy

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1910, one week after his 28th birthday, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky attended the premiere performance of his ballet, The Firebird, at the Paris Opera, staged by the famous Ballet Russe ensemble of Serge Diaghilev.

Recalling the premiere, Stravinsky wrote:

“The first-night audience glittered indeed, but the fact that it was heavily perfumed is more vivid in my memory … I sat in Diaghilev’s box, where, at intermission, a path of celebrities, artists, dowagers, writers and balletomanes appeared … I was called to the stage to bow at the conclusion … I was still on stage when the final curtain came down and saw coming toward me Diaghilev and a dark man with a double forehead whom he introduced as Claude Debussy. The great composer spoke kindly about the music and invited me to dine with him. [Later,] I asked him what he had really thought of The Firebird. He said: ‘Well, one has to start somewhere …’”

Stravinsky himself had feared his ballet score would be thought a poor imitation of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, his great teacher. Nevertheless, The Firebird was Stravinsky’s first big success, and remains one of his best-loved scores.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Firebird Ballet; Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, conductor; DG 453 434

On This Day

Births

• 1860 - French composer Gustave Charpentier, in Dieuze, Lorraine

• 1935 - Austrian composer Kurt Schwertsik, in Vienna

Deaths

• 1767 - German composer Georg Philipp Telemann, 86, in Hamburg

• 1822 - German composer, critic and popular Romantic author Ernst Theodor Amadeus (“E.T.A.”) Hoffmann, 46, in Berlin

Premieres

• 1840 - For the 400th anniversary of the Gutenberg Printing Press, Mendelssohn presents his Symphony No. 2, Lobegesang (Song of Praise) at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig

• 1850 - R. Schumann: opera Genoveva, in Leipzig at the Stadttheater

• 1910 - Stravinsky: ballet, The Firebird, at the Paris Opera, with Gabriel Pierné conducting

• 1923 - de Falla: one-act opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show), first staged performance in Paris at the home of the Princesse de Polignac; This opera was premiered in a concert performance in Seville on March 23, 1923

• 1940 - William Grant Still: choral ballad And They Lynched Him on a Tree, at New York’s Lewisohn Stadium by the Schola Cantorum and Wen Talbert Negro Choir with the New York Philharmonic, Arthur Rodzinksi conducting

• 1954 - Leroy Anderson: Sandpaper Baller at a Decca recording session in New York City, with the composer conducting; Three different grades of sandpaper rubbed together were used to make the vaudeville-style “soft shoe“ dancing sound effects for this classic recording

• 1955 - Grofé: Hudson Valley Suite, in Washington, D.C., by the National Symphony conducted by André Kostelanetz

• 1991 - James MacMillan: Tuireadh (Lament) for clarinet and string quartet, by James Campbell and the Allegri Quartet at St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall (Orkney Islands)