When ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev was looking for a composer to score his 1910 ballet The Firebird, he tried to give the commission for a new score to well-known and established composers – but every one of those composers fell through. So he turned to a relatively unknown composer in his late 20’s, Igor Stravinsky, who took on the task of scoring the first ballet production of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes to feature an entirely new score. And it’s hard to believe how the history of music would have been had Stravinsky not composed the Firebird score and other ballets for Diaghilev’s company. We’ll hear the suite of Stravinsky’s music from the Firebird tonight at 7: our Evening Masterwork on Classical WSMR.
Evening Masterworks: Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite for February 8, 2024
