It's Almost That Time Of Year

I've posted about quite a lot of Stravinsky's music on this blog but finally it's time for the most famous. But because The Rite Of Spring is such a famous piece with such a familiar tale about the premiere, it does make it hard to think of what's worth saying about it here. Well, I can start by saying that it is given a very fine performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati in good modern sound with plenty of the drive and passion that the piece needs and to my mind perfectly judged tempos, another crucial aspect. Of course it was originally composed as ballet music, it was given controversial choreography by Nijinsky, there was a riot ( of sorts ) at the premiere, it concerns ancient pagan fertility rites announcing the ending of winter and the beginning of spring through a young virgin dancing herself to a sacrificial death. So much so familiar but I think it remains a unique piece, the culmination of Stravinsky's three great youthful ballet scores and although steeped in a feeling of Russia it remains outside the tradition. As opposed to the other work on the disk, Firebird, which is the first of the three great ballet scores, is a very fine work but retains noticeable links with the school of Rimsky-Korsakov etc. It surprises me when people talk about what can be done to introduce a younger generation to classical music ( a generation so used to pounding rhythms ) that the obvious visceral attractions of the Rite aren't more widely suggested.