Igor Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
The ballet score that has shaped the musical world ever since 1913. Ryan Bancroft conducts.
About the video
- Filmed 25 May 2023.
- The video is approximately 38 minutes.
Few works have left as profound a mark on twentieth-century music as Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The ballet, subtitled ‘Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts’, was premiered by the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1913. The performance famously caused an uproar in the auditorium, with booing, whistling and protests – while conductor Pierre Monteux carried on through the din.
Stravinsky had already enjoyed great success with The Firebird and Petrushka, but with The Rite of Spring he took a radical step further. The music depicts a pagan spring ritual culminating in a young woman dancing herself to death as a sacrifice. Violent, constantly shifting rhythms, harsh harmonies and an explosive use of the orchestra gave the music an unprecedented power.
What was perceived as shocking in 1913 soon became a landmark of modernism. The Rite of Spring transformed ideas of what an orchestra could do – and more than a century later, the music has scarcely lost its power to take us by surprise.
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The music
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Igor Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
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Participants
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Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
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Ryan Bancroft conductor
