Stravinsky: Danses Concertantes / Pulcinella

Featuring

Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Avanti! Chamber Orchestra
Igor Stravinsky
Jean Sibelius

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Composition History

Stravinsky re-orchestrated Jean Sibelius' Canzonetta for Strings Op. 62a in 1964 as a tribute to his Finnish colleague after a visit to Finland.

Composer Biography

Igor Stravinsky's early major successes as a composer were in ballet music, with works like The Fire Bird, Petrouchka, and The Rite of Spring.

Composition History

Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian art critic and ballet impresario, suggested that Stravinsky write the ballet Pulcinella based on fragments by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an 18th-century Italian composer.

Composition History

Stravinsky's Danses Concertantes was originally intended for the concert hall and premiered in Los Angeles in 1942, before its first stage performance in New York in 1944.

Compositional Technique

Stravinsky's Pulcinella is described as one of the most fascinating musical pastiches, blending Pergolesi's Baroque elegance with Stravinsky's wit.

Compositional Technique

In Danses Concertantes, Stravinsky used music by an earlier composer, Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, as a point of departure for the fourth movement, Pas de deux.

Performer Biography

The AVANTI chamber orchestra was founded in October 1983 by Finnish conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, aiming to gather gifted Finnish musicians and play diverse repertoire.