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Home , Charles Dutoit, Maximilian Steinberg, Scherzo fantastique, Sergei Diaghilev, Symphony in C (ballet), Vera de Bosset

PROGRAM

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Orchestra Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, May 19, 2016, at 8:00 Friday, May 20, 2016, at 1:30

Charles Dutoit Conductor Music by

Fireworks, Op. 4

Symphony in C Moderato alla breve Larghetto concertante— Allegretto Largo—Tempo giusto

INTERMISSION

The Firebird

Friday’s performance is generously endowed by Elaine Frank in loving memory of Zollie S. Frank. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher

Igor Stravinsky Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, . Fireworks, Op. 4

This is the first music by seems that these sentiments were reciprocated, but Stravinsky the Chicago it was only later that I learned so from his family. Symphony Orchestra ever His characteristic reserve had never allowed him played. Frederick Stock to make any sort of display of his feelings.” included it on the second One day, Stravinsky mentioned to half of his program on Rimsky-Korsakov that he was writing a new January 22, 1915, sand- orchestral fantasy: wiched between music by Eric DeLamarter and the He seemed interested and told me to send Queen Mab from it to him as soon as it was ready. I finished Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet. The program book it in six weeks and sent it off to the country mentions (in passing and without comment) a place where he was spending the summer. A recent by Stravinsky called The Rite of few days later a telegram informed me of his Spring; the importance of that score, one of the death and shortly afterwards my registered few truly revolutionary works of the twentieth package was returned to me: “Not delivered century, wasn’t yet appreciated, even though it had on account of death of addressee.” caused a riot at its premiere in little more than a year before. Stravinsky dedicated Fireworks to Rimsky’s daughter Nadia, in honor of her marriage ireworks is a small piece of great his- to Maximilian Steinberg. Apparently the torical importance. Stravinsky began it Steinbergs didn’t appreciate the gesture, then in the spring of 1908, at a time when or later. In fact, Stravinsky’s relations with Fhe often went to see his beloved teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov’s family deteriorated almost mentor, and recently appointed father-figure, literally from the day of the funeral, when he and Rimsky-Korsakov. “He seemed to like my visits,” Rimsky’s widow had exchanged heated words. Stravinsky later wrote. “He had my deep affec- In 1962, when Stravinsky returned to Russia for tion, and I was genuinely attached to him. It the first time in nearly a half century and invited

COMPOSED CSO PERFORMANCES, three , three trombones 1908 THE and tuba, bass drum, cymbals, November 7 & 12, 1940, Orchestra Hall glockenspiel, triangle, celesta, two FIRST PERFORMANCE harps, timpani, strings July 21, 1962, Ravinia Festival February 6, 1909; , Russia APPROXIMATE MOST RECENT PERFORMANCE TIME CSO PERFORMANCES FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 4 minutes July 7, 1968, Ravinia Festival. Seiji January 22 & 23, 1915, Orchestra Hall. Ozawa conducting Frederick Stock conducting CSO RECORDINGS September 11, 12 & 14, 2004, Orchestra 1946. Désiré Defauw conducting. RCA June 26, 1951, Ravinia Festival. William Hall. Sir Andrew Davis conducting Steinberg conducting 1968. Seiji Ozawa conducting. RCA INSTRUMENTATION 1992. Pierre Boulez conducting. three flutes and piccolo, two and english horn, three and bass , two , six horns,

2 Nadia Steinberg to a concert of music which him to orchestrate music by Chopin and Grieg included Fireworks, she declined. for the upcoming ballet season in Paris and com- But Fireworks found a most receptive audience missioned him to compose the score for a new at the first performance in Saint Petersburg ballet he was planning on the Russian legend of in 1909, for that night the crowd included . The rest, of course, is history, but the impresario . He was so the fresh force of a singular new voice in music is impressed with Stravinsky’s music (the Scherzo felt throughout these four explosive, astonishing fantastique also was performed) that he invited minutes of orchestral fireworks.

Igor Stravinsky Symphony in C Performed as part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective

Stravinsky wrote a in the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, composed in symphony at the very 1938 to celebrate the thirtieth wedding anniver- beginning of his career— sary of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, whose it’s his op. 1—but he home in Washington, D.C., gave the work quickly became famous as its name. the composer of three That same year, Mrs. Bliss, along with Mrs. ballet scores (, John Alden Carpenter and several of her friends The Firebird, and The Rite in Chicago, asked Stravinsky to write something of Spring), and he spent to honor the CSO’s fiftieth anniversary in the the next few years 1940–41 season. (Stravinsky later reported that composing for the theater and the house. he was paid $2,500 for the commission and that When, in 1920, he finally returned to writing he accepted partly because he was nearly broke.) music for an orchestra on the concert stage, he To celebrate a milestone in the life of a great composed the of Wind Instruments, American orchestra, Stravinsky decided to tackle which omits strings entirely and is no symphony the “standard” by writing a symphony in C in in the conventional sense of the word. the four orthodox movements—sonata-allegro, Throughout the 1920s, Stravinsky began to put slow movement, scherzo, finale—scored for a his personal stamp on the traditional forms of Beethoven-size orchestra (throwing in the tuba orchestral music—these scores are the earliest of for added measure). He did not foresee that this his so-called neoclassical works. He wrote a work would become, in effect, his American series of concertos—two for piano, one for passport—the score that would accompany his violin, and his own little Brandenburg Concerto move to this country. Nor did he know that its

COMPOSED FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES INSTRUMENTATION 1938–August 19, 1940 November 7, 8 & 12, 1940, Orchestra three flutes and piccolo, two oboes, Hall. The composer conducting two clarinets, two bassoons, four DEDICATION (world premiere) horns, two trumpets, three trombones “This symphony, composed to the and tuba, timpani, strings August 14 & 17, 1968, Ravinia Festival. Glory of God, is dedicated to the as soloists, Robert Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the APPROXIMATE Irving conducting occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of PERFORMANCE TIME its existence.” 28 minutes MOST RECENT CSO PERFORMANCES CSO RECORDING March 20, 21 & 22, 2008, Orchestra 1997. Sir Georg Solti conducting. Hall. Charles Dutoit conducting

3 composition would see him through the most even notice. (Twenty-five years later, when he difficult time of his personal life. recorded the symphony, he commented that it Stravinsky began the first movement in his flat was still unpleasant for him to talk about the on the rue Saint Honoré in Paris in the autumn work, since it recalled his most tragic year.) of 1938. On November 30, his daughter Ludmilla Stravinsky always insisted that his personal died of tuberculosis—the “family disease” as crises at the time were not apparent in this music. the composer would soon call it, with ample (He did confess, however, that “the upheaval evidence—in the sanatorium at Sancellmoz, caused by the war, though neither tragic nor where his wife Catherine and younger daughter terrible in my case, was nevertheless a difficult were also being treated. “It is no exaggeration environment for composition.”) The Symphony in to say that in the following weeks I was able to C is decidedly abstract, its face turned away from continue my own life only by my work on the the world in which it was created. “I did not seek Symphony in C,” Stravinsky later recalled. Three to overcome my grief by portraying or giving months later, Catherine died. Stravinsky himself expression to it in music,” he later wrote, “and then moved to Sancellmoz, as he too had been you will listen in vain, I think, for traces of this diagnosed with the disease. That June, his mother sort of personal emotion.” Stravinsky is not, died. “For the third time in six months I heard of course, the first composer whose art reveals the long requiem service, walked in the field nothing of his private life—only consider beyond Paris to the cemetery of Sainte Geneviève, Beethoven’s light and witty Second Symphony, dropped a handful of dirt in an open grave,” written the autumn he contemplated suicide. But he later wrote. “And for the third time I saved Stravinsky’s musical stoicism has often drawn myself—or at any rate recovered—by composing.” skepticism, and he has sometimes provoked out- Stravinsky finished the second movement of the right anger with his most famous statement on Symphony in C in the sanatorium in Sancellmoz. the subject: “I consider that music is, by its very The death of three dear family members, nature, essentially powerless to express anything compounded by the impending threat of war, at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a persuaded Stravinsky to break with his past and psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature.” leave Europe. He accepted ’s Stravinsky admitted that he had scores of invitation to give the prestigious Charles Eliot Haydn’s and Beethoven’s symphonies at his Norton lectures and its offer of a residence in side when he began his own. The tightly coiled Cambridge, Massachusetts. He landed in New rhythmic figure with which he begins does York at the end of September 1939, never to recall Beethoven’s Fifth—as do the subsequent return to Europe—or to his native Russia— highly charged passages of rapid, repeated eighth except as a visitor. In Cambridge, Stravinsky notes—and he borrows Beethoven’s favorite gave the Norton lectures (in French, as his device of repeating the first theme a step up, English was not yet reliable) and composed the in D. But Stravinsky’s understanding of sym- third movement of his symphony. That winter phonic style is very much his own. As he told a he was reunited with , his lover Boston interviewer: since the 1920s, and they married in Boston in March 1940. The Stravinskys decided to settle in My new symphony is going to be classical California, and by the beginning of the summer in spirit, more concise in its form than they had bought a house in Los Angeles, where, Beethoven. . . . Instead of all the chords on August 19, the composer finished the fourth gravitating toward one final tonic chord, all movement of his symphony for Chicago. notes gravitate toward a single note. Thus Stravinsky always spoke of the two stylistically this symphony will be neither a symphony distinct halves of his symphony—the European in C major nor a symphony in C minor but half and the American half—although, having simply a symphony in C. lived through the most drastic upheaval of his life, he probably could not help but see, in the travinsky’s first movement is in traditional page turn between the second and third move- sonata form (with a “false recapitulation,” ments, the clean break that listeners wouldn’t an old trick of Haydn’s), although the 4 S in Chicago

Over the course of forty years, Igor Stravinsky was a regular guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, and at the Ravinia Festival.

For his debut appearances on February 20 and 21, 1925, Stravinsky chose to con- duct his Song of the Volga Bargemen, , Song of , and a suite from The Firebird. According to the Chicago American, “The audience was pleasantly agog yesterday and gave Mr. Stravinsky a stirring welcome . . . . And what a conductor!” The reviewer, Herman Devries, continued, “I have rarely seen ‘effect’ so completely expressed Chicago American, February 21, 1925 and obtained as it was mirrored upon Orchestra Hall’s platform yesterday. . . . [His conducting is] a study in expression, a marvelously magnetic picture of musical mood.”

Stravinsky guest conducted again in January 1935 and February 1940 before appearing to lead the world premiere of his Symphony in C—commissioned for the Orchestra’s fifti- eth season—on November 7, 1940. Edward Barry in the Chicago Tribune wrote, “In the course of the performance we caught our- selves muttering, ‘Ha! A major work!’ ” Robert Pollak in the Chicago Daily Times proclaimed that “Musical history is made at night and perhaps it was made last night at Orchestra Hall.” And Claudia Cassidy in the Journal of Commerce described the work as “both contemporary and timeless, autobiographical and impersonal. It has the lovely sense of form as much a part of all Stravinsky scores Stravinsky leads a recording session for his ballet in as indescribable richness of instrumentation Orchestra Hall on July 20, 1964 is the signature of the finest. It is lyrical to the point of intoxication, and at the same time delicately, immaculately restrained.”

The composer continued to return regularly to lead the Orchestra, both down- town and at the Ravinia Festival. Stravinsky’s July 1964 visit included recording sessions of his ballet Orpheus for Columbia Records, and his last appearance was on April 17, 1965, conducting his in Orchestra Hall.

Frank Villella is the director of the Rosenthal Archives. For more information regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s anniversary season, please visit cso.org/125moments.

5 conventions of tonality are treated with char- that it’s not always clear what is melody and what acteristic irreverence. Stravinsky chooses not is accompaniment. The third movement, which G major, but G minor, as a counterbalance to C, begins without pause, is a headlong scherzo and at one point modulates to the very unclassi- propelled by its constantly changing meter— cal destination of E-flat minor. The movement extreme even by Stravinsky’s standards, and is very much in the spirit of Beethoven— something of a shock after the rhythmic stability particularly in its rhythmic energy, tight thematic of the previous movements. Stravinsky felt that unity, and steady allegro pulse (remarkably for this music somehow captured the spirit of his Stravinsky, the master of shifting meters, there new surroundings in the United States, and he is not one change of time signature in the entire claimed that a jocular solo, in particular, movement). But it is Beethoven seen through would never have occurred to him had he not twentieth-century spectacles, and in the end seen “the neon glitter of the California boule- it sounds like pure Stravinsky. (The conductor vards from a speeding automobile.” said that “the allegro of the The last movement combines the European Symphony in C is no more than the portrait of a and American halves of the piece, integrating symphonic allegro.”) material from the first movement into the bustle The lightly scored second movement— of a good classical finale. The coda is another Stravinsky omits most of the brass and the of Stravinsky’s signature apotheoses—a slow timpani—is a kind of “Italianate song-and- procession of stately wind chords, the very last accompaniment.” The fabric is so playfully woven mimicked by the muted strings.

Igor Stravinsky The Firebird

The Firebird opened on But Stravinsky owes his first international success June 25, 1910; on June 26, to and Anatole Liadov, both Stravinsky was a famous prominent, though modestly talented Russian man. The great impresario composers who declined Diaghilev’s offer to Sergei Diaghilev had write music for The Firebird. (Richard Taruskin predicted as much—at has debunked the beloved old story that Liadov, a one of the final dress famous procrastinator, initially accepted but lost rehearsals he pointed to the job when Diaghilev learned that he was just Stravinsky and stocking up on manuscript paper at the time the said, “Mark him well; he first installment of the score was due.) is a man on the eve of celebrity.” Diaghilev was a The Firebird was a spectacular success. (See good judge of such things, for in 1910 his circle Stravinsky’s account, which follows.) According included many of the most famous creative artists to Ravel, the Parisian audience wanted a taste of of the time. He was also, perhaps, excessively the avant-garde, and this dazzling music by the proud, for he had discovered Igor Stravinsky—or, daring young Russian fit the bill. The Firebird was to be more accurate, he was the one who put Stravinsky’s first large-scale commission, and, Stravinsky in the right place at the right time. being an overnight hit, it was quickly followed The rest was all Stravinsky’s doing. by two more. The first, Petrushka, enhanced his The right place was Paris in 1910. By chance, reputation; the second, , made Diaghilev had heard Stravinsky’s music for the him the most notorious composer alive. first time just two years before, at a concert in Both of those works were more revolutionary Saint Petersburg. He immediately invited the than The Firebird—less indebted to folk melody twenty-six-year-old composer to assist in orches- and the gestures of other masters—and spoke in trating music for the 1909 ballet season in Paris. a voice of greater individuality. But The Firebird

6 is one of the most impressive calling cards in the picture,” he later wrote, “I was once addressed by history of music—a work of such brilliance that, a man in an American railway dining car, and if he had written nothing else, Stravinsky’s name quite seriously, as ‘Mr. Fireberg.’ ” would still be known to us today. Igor Stravinsky on The Firebird lthough Stravinsky later called the Firebird orchestra “wastefully large,” had already begun to think about The Firebird he used it with formidable clarity and when I returned to Saint Petersburg from imagination. “ForA me,” Stravinsky wrote, “the Ustilug, in the autumn of 1909, though I was most striking effect in The Firebird was the Inot yet certain of the commission (which, in fact, natural-harmonic string glissando near the did not come until December, more than a month beginning, which the bass chord touches off after I had begun to compose; I remember the day like a catherine wheel. I was delighted to have Diaghilev telephoned me to say go ahead, and my discovered this, and I remember my excitement in telling him I already had). Early in November, I demonstrating it to Rimsky’s violinist and cellist moved from Saint Petersburg to a dacha belong- sons. I remember, too, ’s astonish- ing to the Rimsky-Korsakov family about seventy ment when he heard it two years later in Berlin.” miles southeast of the city. I went there for a The score is filled with delicious details, though vacation, a rest in birch forests and snow-fresh air, none so novel as the one Stravinsky rightfully but instead began to work on The Firebird. Andrei claimed as his own, and, in the closing pages, a Rimsky-Korsakov (son of the composer) was magnificent sweep unmatched by much music with me at the time, and he often was during the written in the previous century and little since. following months; because of this, The Firebird is With The Firebird, Stravinsky found instant dedicated to him. The introduction up to the bas- and enduring fame. “And, oh yes, to complete the soon and clarinet figure at bar six was composed

COMPOSED February 27, 1940, Orchestra Hall INSTRUMENTATION November 1909–May 1910 three flutes and two piccolos, three November 7, 8 & 12, 1940, oboes and english horn, three Orchestra Hall FIRST PERFORMANCE clarinets, clarinet in E-flat and bass June 25, 1910, with Sergei Diaghilev’s January 12, 14 & 15, 1954, clarinet, three bassoons and two Russes at the Paris Opera Orchestra Hall , four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and July 21, 1962, Ravinia Festival FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, (SUITES) cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, MOST RECENT CSO February 11 & 12, 1921, Orchestra Hall. xylophone, celesta, piano, two harps, PERFORMANCES (COMPLETE) Frederick Stock conducting and strings, with three trumpets, four August 9, 1984, Ravinia Festival. tenor tubas, and bells playing offstage July 3, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Ernest Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Ansermet conducting January 21, 22 & 23, 2010, Orchestra APPROXIMATE Hall. Pierre Boulez conducting PERFORMANCE TIME FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES 47 minutes (COMPLETE) January 31, 2010, Carnegie Hall. Pierre February 8, 9 & 10, 1973, Orchestra Boulez conducting CSO RECORDINGS Hall. Seiji Ozawa conducting 1969. Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. MOST RECENT CSO July 1, 1982, Ravinia Festival. Charles Angel (suite) PERFORMANCES (SUITES) Dutoit conducting October 2, 3 & 4, 2014, Orchestra Hall. 1992. Pierre Boulez conducting. Riccardo Muti conducting Deutsche Grammophon (complete) CSO PERFORMANCES, THE COMPOSER CONDUCTING June 26, 2015, Morton Arboretum. 1996. conducting. (SUITES) James Feddeck conducting Disney (suite) February 20 & 21, 1925, Orchestra Hall July 12, 2015, Ravinia Festival. Ted 2000. Pierre Boulez conducting. January 14, 1935; Pabst Theater, Sperling conducting EuroArts (video, complete) Milwaukee, Wisconsin January 17, 18 & 22, 1935, Orchestra Hall 7 in the country, as well as notations for later parts. especially Bakst, who was Diaghilev’s principal I returned to Saint Petersburg in December and adviser, contributed ideas to the plan of the sce- remained there until, in March, I had finished nario; I should also add that Bakst was as much the composition. The orchestra score was ready responsible for the costumes as Golovine. My a month later, and the complete music mailed to own “collaboration” with Fokine means nothing Paris by mid-April. (The score is dated May 18, more than that we studied the libretto together, but by that time I was merely retouching details.) episode by episode, until I knew the exact The Firebird did not attract me as a subject. measurements required of the music. In spite of Like all story ballets, it demanded descriptive Fokine’s wearying homiletics, delivered at each music of a kind I did not want to write. I had meeting, on the role of music as an accompani- not yet proved myself as a composer, and I ment to , he taught me much, and I have had not earned the right to criticize the aes- worked with choreographers somewhat in the thetics of my collaborators, but I did criticize same way ever since. I like exact requirements. them, and arrogantly, though perhaps my age I was flattered, of course, at the promise of (twenty-seven) was more arrogant than I was. a performance of my music in Paris, and my Above all, I could not abide the assumption that excitement on arriving in that city, from Ustilug, my music would be imitation Rimsky-Korsakov, towards the end of May, could hardly have been especially as by that time I was in such revolt greater. These ardors were somewhat cooled, against poor Rimsky. However, if I say I was less however, at the first rehearsal. The words “for than eager to fulfill the commission, I know that, Russian export” seemed to be stamped every- in truth, my reservations about the subject were where, both on the stage and in the music. The also an advance defense for my not being sure mimic scenes were especially obvious in this I could. But Diaghilev, the diplomat, arranged sense, but I could say nothing about them as they everything. He came to call on me one day, with were what Fokine liked best. I was also deflated Fokine, Nijinsky, Bakst, and Benois. When the to discover that not all of my musical remarks five of them had proclaimed their belief in my were held to be oracular, and Pierné, the con- talent, I began to believe, too, and accepted. ductor, disagreed with me once in front of the Fokine is credited as the librettist of The whole orchestra. I had written “non crescendo,” Firebird, but I remember that all of us, and a precaution common enough in the music of

THE FIREBIRD: A SYNOPSIS OF THE COMPLETE BALLET

Fokine’s adaptation of the fairy tale The captive princesses are freed, Daybreak— pits the Firebird, a good fairy, against and Ivan and his beloved princess Magic Carillon, appearance of the ogre Kashchei, whose soul is pre- are betrothed. Kashchei’s guardian monsters and served as an egg in a casket. A young A scene-by-scene breakdown of the capture of Ivan Tsarevich— prince, Ivan Tsarevich, wanders into Stravinsky’s score follows. Arrival of Kashchei the Immortal, Kashchei’s magic garden in pursuit of Kashchei’s dialogue with Ivan the Firebird. When he captures her, Introduction Tsarevich, intercession of she pleads for her release and gives Scene 1: the princesses— him one of her feathers, whose magic Kashchei’s magic garden— Appearance of the Firebird— will protect him from harm. He then Appearance of the Firebird pursued Dance of Kashchei’s retinue, under the meets thirteen princesses, all under by Ivan Tsarevich— Firebird’s spell— Kashchei’s spell, and falls in love with Dance of the Firebird— Infernal dance of all one of them. When he tries to follow Ivan Tsarevich captures the Firebird— Kashchei’s subjects— them into the magic garden, a great The Firebird’s entreaties— Lullaby (the Firebird), Kashchei carillon sounds an alarm and he is Appearance of the thirteen wakes up— captured. Kashchei is about to turn enchanted princesses— Kashchei’s Death, deep shadows— Ivan to stone when the prince waves The princesses’ game with the golden the feather; the Firebird appears. apples (Scherzo)— Scene 2: Her lullaby puts Kashchei to sleep, Sudden appearance of Disappearance of the palace and and she then reveals the secret of his Ivan Tsarevich— dissolution of Kashchei’s enchant- immortality. Ivan opens the casket The princesses’ khorovod ments; animation of the petrified and smashes the egg, killing Kashchei. (Round dance)— knights; general rejoicing

8 Costume designs by Léon Bakst for the ’ production of The Firebird, Paris Opera, 1910: the Firebird (left), as the Firebird (center), the Tsarevna (right) the last fifty years, but Pierné said, “Young man, malodorous calling card. The audience laughed, if you do not want a crescendo, then do not and Diaghilev decided not to risk a repetition in write anything.” future performances. That he could have tried it The first-night audience glittered indeed, but even once seems incredible to me now—but the the fact that it was heavily perfumed is more incident was forgotten in the general acclaim for vivid in my memory; the gaily elegant London the new ballet afterwards. audience, when I came to know it later, seemed I was called to the stage to bow at the con- almost deodorized by comparison. I sat in clusion, and was recalled several times. I was Diaghilev’s box, where, at intermission, artists, still on stage when the final curtain had come dowagers, aged Egerias of the Ballet, “intel- down, and I saw Diaghilev coming towards me, lectuals,” balletomanes, appeared. I met for the and a dark man with a double forehead, whom first time Proust, Giraudoux, Paul Morand, he introduced as . The great Saint-John Perse, Claudel (with whom, years composer spoke kindly about the music, ending later, I nearly collaborated on a musical treatment his words with an invitation to dine with him. of the Book of Tobit) at The Firebird, though I Some years later, when we were sitting together cannot remember whether at the premiere or at in his box at a performance of Pelléas, I asked subsequent performances. At one of the latter him what he really thought of The Firebird. He I also met Sarah Bernhardt. She was thickly said, “Que voulez-vous, il fallait bien commencer veiled, sitting in a wheelchair in her private box, par quelque chose” [Well, you had to start with and seemed terribly apprehensive lest anyone something]. Honest, but not extremely flatter- should recognize her. After a month of such ing. Yet shortly after The Firebird premiere he society, I was happy to retire to a sleepy village gave me his well-known photo (in profile) with in Brittany. a dedication “à Igor Stravinski en toute sympa- A moment of unexpected comedy occurred thie artistique.” I was not so honest about the near the beginning of the performance. work we were then hearing. I thought Pelléas Diaghilev had had the idea that a procession a great bore as a whole, and in spite of many of real horses should march on stage—in step wonderful pages. with, to be exact, the last six eighth notes of bar eight. The poor animals did enter on cue all right, but they began to neigh and whinny, and Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the one of them, a better critic than an actor, left a Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1987.

© 2016 Chicago Symphony Orchestra 9