Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, the Sacrificial Dance

Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring’s first performance in 1913 brought about the most notorious audience riot in musical history. The Introduction met with noisy protests from the auditorium of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and as the piece continued near-pandemonium broke out in the more expensive seats, with equally fierce shouts of support from the standing-room in the stalls. Only a year later though, the work’s concert premiere was a triumph, with Stravinsky carried shoulder-high through the Paris streets by cheering admirers!

This work is Stravinsky’s immortal hymn to the Russian spring - the composer had a vision of a solemn pagan rite sacrificing a ‘Chosen One’ to the god of spring. Conductor Pierre Monteux recalls hearing Stravinsky’s first interpretation of the score with Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev: “With only Diaghilev and myself for an audience, Stravinsky sat down to play a piano reduction of the entire score… Before he got very far, I was convinced he was raving mad… Stravinsky pounded away, occasionally stamping his feet and jumping up and down to accentuate the force of the music.”

In this final movement the ‘Chosen One’ dances herself to death, unleashing the work’s ultimate degree of rhythmic complexity and firepower.