With his Suite No. 3, Tchaikovsky achieved one of his most satisfying public successes - both at its St. Petersburg premiere in 1885 and its performance in Moscow a week later - and he was able to claim with pride that he had "never before experienced such a triumph." The concluding Theme and Variations, which is often played separately (as it is on today's program), surely had much to do with this initial success. Thus, in a set of richly diverse variations on its folk-like theme, Tchaikovsky contrasts warm textures with typically Russian repetitions of short melodic fragments, includes a rather tongue-in-cheek fugue along the way, and ends with a rousing Polonaise ("Tempo di Polacca; molto brillante") in which the original theme survives only as an introductory flourish.
Like most overnight successes, Stravinsky's score to The Firebird, first performed by Diaghilev's famed Ballets Russes in Paris during the 1910 season, came after years of work in relative obscurity. Stravinsky's sudden elevation to prominence was made even more dramatic by his being called in, under some pressure, to take the place of another composer who was working too slowly to satisfy Diaghilev. Of his three most famous ballets - The Firebird, Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913) - the first is the most traditional in its overall approach, although its innovative rhythms were initially quite difficult for the dancers. Recast as an orchestral Suite, The Firebird leaves out the details of its hero's triumph over the evil King Kastchei through the magic of the Firebird, in order to present more directly the brilliant contrast Stravinsky provide for its supernatural forces, particularly in the concluding sections, the "Infernal Dance" and "Berceuse-Finale."
If there is a link among the works on this afternoon's program, it the Parisian taste for the exotic that Stravinsky satisfied with his coloristic adaptation of the ballet style of his fellow Russian Tchaikovsky. Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863, revised 1870) and Ravel's Tzigane (1924) also cater to this Parisian appetite, by exploiting the possibilities that gypsy music presented for the virtuoso violin. Personal and generational differences between the latter two are striking, however, as Saint-Saëns alternates his distinctive dance melody with contrasting interludes according to nineteenth-century tastes, while Ravel exploits more fully the coloristic potential of the idiom. To be sure, neither composer neglects his primary task: to provide a piquant showcase for the soloist, designed, first and foremost, to dazzle.
--- Raymond Knapp
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