Igor Stravinsky – Pulcinella & Firebird

Two famous ballets from Stravinsky, very different in mood and imagery. The Firebird stems from the composer’s early modern period, during which he ‘tortured’ the ears of his audience. In spite of the barbaric elements in sound, the piece has essentially fairy-tale qualities; choreographer Glen Tetley strove to emphasize its dream-like atmosphere. It is beautifully performed by the Royal Danish Ballet, who were a renowned ensemble at the time of recording (1982).
This interpretation was given a RAI Award.

Pulcinella was written a decade later and initiated Stravinsky’s neo-classical period, for which he looked back at Pergolesi and his contemporaries. This obviously for more than a musical reason only; the ballet strongly reminds of the improvised Commedia dell’arte which was very popular in Italy from the 16th to the 18th. Pergolesi was no stranger to this form of theatre for the common people. In fact, he hardly wrote anything else than Opera Buffa, which is the vocal heir of the Commedia.

Note: the ballets were spread over two VOB-sets on the original dvd. I don’t know of any software that will rip this into a single avi, so I had to make two separate rips. Rather than merging them afterwards, which is a lot of fuss anyway, I thought it better to keep them apart. The performances are independent, because created by different choreographers, and done by different musicians/conductors and dancers. It beats me why Arthaus would put these ballets on one and the same dvd in the first place..well, there’ll be commercial reasons behind that.

Performers Pulcinella

Scapino Ballet
Choreografie: Nils Christe
London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado

Performers Firebird

Royal Danish Ballet
Choreografie: Glen Tetley
Royal Danish Orchestra, Poul Jorgensen