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The Russian Stravinsky: A Philharmonic Festival
Conducted by Valery Gergiev
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), a Baltic resort near St. Petersburg, in 1882. The third son of Feodor Stravinsky, one of the principal basses at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the younger Stravinsky's musical education began with piano lessons at home when he was ten. He studied law at St. Petersburg University and music theory, but his most important teacher was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied informally from the age of 20, taking regular lessons from 1905 until 1908.
Although Stravinsky's first substantial composition was a Symphony in E-flat major, Op. 1, written under the tutelage of Rimsky-Korsakov, it was The Firebird — a ballet commissioned by Serge Diaghilev and premiered by his Ballets Russes in Paris in 1910 — that brought Stravinsky into sudden international prominence. The next year he consolidated his reputation with Petrushka. The composer's next major score — a third ballet commission from Diaghilev — is one of the landmarks in the history of music: The Rite of Spring. The work marked the coming of modernism in music and was met with a mixture of astonishment and hostility, and Stravinsky became known as one of the most radical composers of the age.
Also active as a performer of his own music, initially as a pianist and later as a conductor, Stravinsky was the first composer to leave a nearly complete legacy of recordings of his own music. His conducting career continued until 1967, when advancing age and illness forced him to retire. He died on April 6, 1971, in New York, and his body was flown to Venice for burial on the island of San Michele, near Diaghilev's grave.
Stravinsky and the New York Philharmonic
Igor Stravinsky's long history with the New York Philharmonic began on January 8, 1925, when the composer conducted the Orchestra in an all-Stravinsky program; he was 42 years old. Forty-one years later, on July 23, 1966, he conducted his Symphony of Psalms at age 84, at the Philharmonic's Festival of Stravinsky: His Heritage and His Legacy. In the intervening years, Stravinsky conducted the Philharmonic 34 times — including the world premiere of his Symphony in Three Movements in 1946, a New York Philharmonic Commission — and also performed three times as pianist. His works have appeared on Orchestra or Ensembles programs almost 1,100 times.
