Pétrouchka has remained one of Stravinsky’s most popular scores, and the source of its success is no mystery. It is a ballet about three puppets at a Russian Shrovetide carnival, actually began life as a sort of piano concerto. In the summer of 1910, shortly after the successful premiere of The Firebird, Stravinsky started work on a ballet about a pagan ritual sacrifice in ancient Russia. But he set the manuscript to The Rite of Spring aside when he was consumed by a new idea: “I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet-blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.”

When impresario Serge Diaghilev visited Stravinsky that summer in Switzerland to see how the pagan-sacrifice ballet was progressing, he was at first horrified to learn that Stravinsky was doing nothing with it. But when Stravinsky played some of his new music, Diaghilev was charmed and saw possibilities for a ballet. With Alexander Benois, they created a storyline around the Russian puppet theater, specifically the tale of Pétrouchka, “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.” Stravinsky composed the score to what was now a ballet between August 1910 and May 1911, and Pétrouchka was first performed in Paris in 1911, with Nijinsky in the title role.

Stravinsky published Pétrouchka the year after the premiere, but in 1947 he revised the score. These revisions had several purposes: to reduce the size of the orchestra, to simplify some of the metric complexities, and to give greater importance to the piano, which had been the music’s original inspiration but had faded from view in the ballet version. Each version has its proponents, some preferring the greater clarity of the revision, others the opulence of the original. At this concert, Stravinsky’s revised 1947 score is performed.

—Program Note by Eric Bromberger

Pétrouchka has remained one of Stravinsky’s most popular scores, and the source of its success is no mystery. It is a ballet about three puppets at a Russian Shrovetide carnival, actually began life as a sort of piano concerto. In the summer of 1910, shortly after the successful premiere of The Firebird, Stravinsky started work on a ballet about a pagan ritual sacrifice in ancient Russia. But he set the manuscript to The Rite of Spring aside when he was consumed by a new idea: “I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet-blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.”

When impresario Serge Diaghilev visited Stravinsky that summer in Switzerland to see how the pagan-sacrifice ballet was progressing, he was at first horrified to learn that Stravinsky was doing nothing with it. But when Stravinsky played some of his new music, Diaghilev was charmed and saw possibilities for a ballet. With Alexander Benois, they created a storyline around the Russian puppet theater, specifically the tale of Pétrouchka, “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.” Stravinsky composed the score to what was now a ballet between August 1910 and May 1911, and Pétrouchka was first performed in Paris in 1911, with Nijinsky in the title role.

Stravinsky published Pétrouchka the year after the premiere, but in 1947 he revised the score. These revisions had several purposes: to reduce the size of the orchestra, to simplify some of the metric complexities, and to give greater importance to the piano, which had been the music’s original inspiration but had faded from view in the ballet version. Each version has its proponents, some preferring the greater clarity of the revision, others the opulence of the original. At this concert, Stravinsky’s revised 1947 score is performed.

—Program Note by Eric Bromberger