Being a weeklie podcaste from Madison, Wisconsin featuring several remarkable curiosities therein occurring being a compendium of live music from divers artistes
Show #155: Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
March 17th, 2008
We here in Madison are at the tail end of a record breaking winter with 92 inches (233.7 cm) of snow this season and we are all looking forward to the warmer weather. In three days those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will be treated to the vernal equinox and so I hope to usher in the warmer temperatures with this week’s show. As the birds & bees are doin’ it and things take a turn towards the verdant, crank up Le Sacre de Printemps (The Rite of Spring).
The genesis of The Rite of Spring lay in a vision that Igor Stravinsky had in 1910 of a young pagan girl in a dancing up such a frenzy that she dies. Two years later he began work on the ballet with the aid of folklorist Nikolai Roerich. Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed the work. The piece premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913 and was infamously accompanied by a riot. Apparently the Paris elite just couldn’t handle the emphasis on rhythm as dancers dressed like Russian pagans went about their coronation of spring on the stage with young girls dancing and making mystic circles. Watching The Rite of Spring being performed, even I, a ballet know-nothing, can tell that it’s not your traditional bit of dancing. When I think of ballet, I think of grace and of impossibly thin women stretching their limbs out into positions that I could never hope to achieve. Here, there’s stomping and jagged pelvic movement to accompany the harsher rhythms of the music.
(Photo found here.)
The Rite of Spring has two parts: Adoration of the Earth and The Sacrifice with a total running time of about 30 minutes. The recording here is of the 1947 revision by Stravinsky and was performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Valerij Gergiev conducting. The concert took place on 5 February 2005 at Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden and was broadcast on Swedish radio so this is a very nice sounding show.
Stravisnky & The Rite of Spring
YouTube has The Rite of Spring in its entirety as performed by the Joffrey Ballet.
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Very, very nice version of Le Sacre. It reminds me in many ways of the way Stravinsky conducted it. Thanks for the offering.
Yes this is a great post, thanks. And even though I live in a place where winter is very mild, I too am glad to see spring again.
You are both welcome. Winter apparently isn’t quite over in these parts yet. D’oh!