Europe of 1913, on the brink of the Great War, saw an artistic flowering no other single year can equal.  Picasso, Boccioni, Scriabin, Schoenberg, Debussy all produced great masterpieces which irrevocably changed the future of art and music.  Yet, the work that had the greatest impact, the one whose premiere is still vividly remembered a hundred years hence, is Stravinsky’s  The Rite of Spring. To be fair, it was the only premiere that resulted in a full-blown riot.

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Stravinsky wrote the ballet for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as a complete work of art, with choreography by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky, and stage designs and costumes by the artist Nicholas Roerich.  By some unpredictable alchemy, all the elements came together to stun the audience.  If those who came expected lovely girls in white flitting gracefully about to the sound of lilting tunes, they must have been disconcerted at the least by the spectacle that unfolded before them, of the “scenes of Pagan Russia”, with a group of “knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down,” to quote Stravinsky himself.  The music must have added to the shock -- the jagged unstoppable rhythms, the harmonies that went from lush to unbearably harsh, the wild accents, the untamed relentless energy.  The libretto did not help.  "The pagans on-stage made pagans of the audience," (Thomas Kelly), so the listeners threw garbage and punches, and police had to intervene. 

The Riot at the Rite, in the end, probably served to bring the music even earlier fame and notoriety than it might have achieved otherwise. Even at the remove of an entire century, as we celebrate its centennial in 2013, this masterpiece wins new converts and inspires passionate love in each new generation of listeners and performers. 

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We pianists are not immune to its magic.  Stravinsky published his famously difficult Piano Duo version along with the orchestral score, mainly for rehearsal use, but did not create a solo version as he did for his earlier Petruchka.  A number of transcribers have attempted to do the honors in the intervening years, but, at least in the opinion of this pianist, their efforts did not succeed in translating the colors, the richness, the many complexities of the score to the piano (perhaps due to making concessions to the limitations of pianistic technique).  The transcription offered here, made by Vladimir Leyetchkiss in 1967, on the other hand, much like Stravinsky’s own Petruchka, takes full advantage of all the possibilities of the instrument, while bringing out the rhythms and the textures in crystalline clarity, as no orchestra performance could.  Stravinsky himself had a chance to study and approve of this transcription in his last few years of life.

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Part I.  Adoration of the Earth

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1. Introduction. The ballet opens with a most impressionistic vision of spring.  There is a bird, and another bird, and a babbling brook, and crickets, all singing in their own key and their own meter, joining together in a sweet cacophony.  Auguries of Spring – Dances of the Young Girls. The curtain opens and the first dance begins, the one that must have so unnerved that first audience.  The boys tell fortunes, accomplished by stomping and jumping up and down, to the sound of the famous, irregularly accented bi-tonal chords.  The girls appear, to a sweet melody that sounds so much like a folk song; finally all join together in a raucous finale.

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2. The Mock Abduction.  Once again the boys take over, with much ado and mayhem, but mostly harmless fun. For the first time in the ballet we hear Stravinsky’s original take on bi-modality– simultaneously appearing major and minor versions of the same tune.

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3. Spring Round Dance. The women restore order with a series of hypnotic trills.  A beautiful melody emerges, as we hear more and more dancers join in the dance. After a hilarious interruption by the incorrigible boys the trills come back and dissolve.

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4. Games of the Rival Clans. The bi-modality returns to represent two competing groups of boys. Excitement rises, the competition grows more intense.  Unnoticed, an aged priest makes his appearance.  Procession of the Wise Elder.  Finally, the dancers see the Elder and make way for him to make his waddling way to the front, while a wild celebration erupts around him.

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5. Adoration of the Earth.  The priest makes a short quiet invocation, and an untamed Dance of the Earth explodes, slowly gathering momentum and sweeping all inhibitions and even the veneer of civilization aside in its wake.

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Part II:  The Sacrifice

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6.  Introduction.  The mood shifts, the music is imbued with darkness and mystery. A beautiful melody emerges, which again might well have been a Russian folk tune that will represent the young girls.  The priests, with their heavy labored steps, are also here, and in between, a section that is one of the best examples of Stravinsky’s use of layered ostinatos, little recognizable snippets of music repeated against each other, but never quite the same length or starting at the same time, to create an ever-shifting tapestry of magical threads. The curtain rises again for the Mystical Circles of the Young Girls.  The intoxicating melody of the introduction returns again and again, clothed in ever more ravishing harmonies.  The elders walk in, and the dance resumes.  But now, it is twice interrupted by a loud chord, as the same girl is twice pushed out of the circle.  And so the choice is made, as the priests declare with eleven clanging chords.

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7.  Glorification of the Chosen Victim. The Elect is celebrated in a raucous dance filled with almost jazzy irregular rhythms and mad accents. Is the Elect resigned or is she trying desperately to escape?  I leave the answer to the listener’s imagination.

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8.  The Summoning of the Ancients. The priests walk in, wearing fantastical masks, and embark on the Ritual Dance of the Ancients, which is the last moment of relief and good humor in the story.

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9. The Sacrificial Dance. And now we realize that the Elect had been chosen to sacrifice herself to ensure the coming of spring, by dancing herself to death.  She no longer resists, and darkness overwhelms. Perhaps it is necessary to remember that only a year after the premiere, the world collapsed into the First World War, which was nothing if not human sacrifice on an industrial scale. It is easy to believe that artists and composers had felt its coming, and expressed the horror in their own way.

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The Second World War also inspired great art. Prokofiev wrote, as was expected of him, patriotic and inspirational things, but also his great Fifth Symphony and the three huge war-time piano sonatas, masterworks filled with pain, despair, struggle and darkness.  He also composed the ballet Cinderella, whose story and music sparkle with luminous joy.  A great pianist himself, Prokofiev transcribed several of the dances for the piano. 

Amoroso is the finale of the ballet, where Cinderella and the Prince dance happily into the sunset. The opening section is newly composed for the transcription.  It is easy to imagine the dancers entwined in a pas de deux, as their melodies emerge from the luxurious texture.  The four Fairies (borrowed from Sleeping Beauty) appear early in the story, during the Ball where Cinderella meets her Prince.  The charming vignettes – energetic Spring, languid Summer, nervous Autumn and gliding Winter -- embody the various characters of their seasons.