Stravinsky: Orchestral Works

Featuring

Gustavo Gimeno
Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
Igor Stravinsky

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Critical Reception

The 1913 premiere of "The Rite of Spring" in Paris was famously riotous, but the work only entered the standard ballet repertoire after World War II, in the 1950s.

Composition History

Stravinsky's ballet "Jeu de cartes" (Game of Cards) was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for his new company, American Ballet, with choreography by George Balanchine.

Compositional Technique

The music of "The Rite of Spring" is anti-symphonic, lacking harmonic progressions, thematic development, and transitions, instead relying on accumulation.

Composition History

Stravinsky's "Funeral Song" (Chant funèbre), composed in 1908 in memory of his teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was lost for over a century until its orchestral parts were rediscovered in 2015.

Recording & Production

This album was recorded at Philharmonie Luxembourg in January and June 2017, and June-July 2018.

Composition History

Stravinsky's idea for "The Rite of Spring" came to him as a "fleeting vision" in 1910, imagining a pagan rite where elders watched a young girl dance herself to death to propitiate the god of spring.

Composer Biography

Igor Stravinsky, born in 1882 to a Polish noble father who was a bass at the St. Petersburg opera, became a French citizen in 1934 and then an American citizen in 1945.