The Firebird: Suite "1919"

The suite opens with a hushed, unsettled introduction, low strings creeping upward, as if the stage were still dark and something magical were about to appear. This leads into the Firebird's own dance, quick and glittering, with sudden flashes of woodwind color that suggest a creature made of fire and feathers.

A gentler episode follows: the Princesses' Round Dance (Khorovod), a folk-like tune passed between the strings and winds, simple and songful after the shimmer that came before. Then the mood turns dark and violent in the Infernal Dance of King Kashchei, all stamping rhythms, sudden accents, and brass outbursts, music of pure menace and force.

After that comes the Berceuse, a lullaby, the harp and solo bassoon singing a tender melody that quiets everything down after the chaos. Listeners often notice how the orchestra seems to hold its breath here.

The suite closes with the Finale, growing from a single horn melody into a broad, radiant chorale for the full orchestra. The tune keeps climbing until the whole ensemble arrives together on a triumphant final chord, the fairy tale's happy ending rendered in pure sound.

Stravinsky wrote The Firebird in 1910 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris, and its success made the twenty-eight-year-old composer famous overnight. The full ballet score calls for a huge orchestra, so Stravinsky later drew shorter concert suites from it that smaller ensembles could perform. He made suites in 1911, 1919, and 1945; the 1919 version, scored for a more modest orchestra than the original ballet, became the most widely played. It has remained a concert staple ever since, prized both as a showcase for orchestral color and as an accessible introduction to Stravinsky's music before he moved into the sharper, more astringent style of his later works.