Igor Stravinsky. Berceuse and Finale from The Firebird Suite No. 2 (1919)

Performed by the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra (BSO), led by Music Director Dr. Beverly Everett, at its Chance Chants concert held at Bemidji High School Auditorium on October 8, 2017.

When Stravinsky was twenty-eight and unknown outside Russia, he had the good luck to have two short pieces performed at a subscription concert by the resident orchestra in St. Petersburg. In the audience was Serge Diaghileff, an impresario who was planning to create a new ballet company in Paris called the Ballet Russes. Diaghileff needed a composer/collaborator and his critical ear told him that the man whose music he had just experienced held the kind of promise he was looking for. As a tentative first step, he asked Stravinsky to orchestrate a few small pieces for the opening season of the Ballet Russes. With this test successfully completed, Diaghileff commissioned Stravinsky to write a ballet based on a subject of Russian Legend. Stravinsky chose the legend of the Firebird, a beneficent fairy who helps young Czarevich Ivan rescue a beautiful princess and her twelve handmaidens from the green-taloned monster Kaschei. At the end, Kaschei is killed by the heroic Czarevich, his castles and retinue disappear in darkness, and when the light returns, the Princess and her retinue are released amid general rejoicing. Ivan marries the princess and they all live happily ever after.
Stravinsky extracted three concert suites from The Firebird. The Second Suite, from which the Berceuse and Finale are drawn, is scored for traditional smaller orchestra and this is the version that will be heard on today’s performance. The Berceuse is a nostalgic lullaby that causes all the monsters of Kaschei’s domain to fall asleep. The bassoon phrases at the beginning remind the listener of the “Once upon a time” words that begin all good fairy tales. At the end of the Berceuse a whispering tremolo of the strings floats down through the orchestra and leads without interruption to the Finale. After a rippling glissando of the harp, the whole orchestra exults in a song of deliverance and with a mighty procession of brass chords against a shimmering pedal point of strings, the fairy tale ends in a burst of amazing brilliance.

(Program notes are from the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra’s 2017-18 concert program, p. 8 and were written by Dr. Patrick Riley.)