This is a 2018 recording of Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet Petrushka — a work rooted in Russian puppet tradition, set during Maslenitsa in 1830 Saint Petersburg, and built from folk tunes, Lanner waltzes, a French music hall melody, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Its defining feature is the 'Petrushka chord', an early use of bitonality. The record also includes Concertino, Agon, and Scherzo à La Russe — but the sources say nothing about how this 2018 version interprets them.
The 1928 Columbia recording is the first orchestral capture of Stravinsky’s 1910 ballet — conducted by the composer, using whole-tone and octatonic harmony as dramatic agents, and deploying extended techniques as deliberate ruptures. It is not nostalgic. It is not polite. It is structural storytelling in sound.
A 1960 recording of Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet score, conceived as a solemn pagan rite depicting a young girl dancing herself to death. Composed in a tiny room in Clarens, Switzerland, using a muted upright piano. Its sound features uneven rhythms, superimposed harmonies, atonality, and extensive instrumentation. The opening bassoon melody derives from a Lithuanian folk song anthology. Its 1913 premiere caused a near-riot due to its avant-garde nature. It scattered musical language irreversibly, influencing composers including Copland, Glass, Bartók, and Boulez.