Philharmonia Orchestra and Santtu-Matias Rouvali: Stravinsky’s Firebird

Philharmonia Orchestra and Santtu-Matias Rouvali

A ballet dancer on the rostrum: Santtu-Matias Rouvali. This Finn has been chief conductor of London's Philharmonia Orchestra since 2021, and the combination is garnering high praise in the press. To The Guardian he once told of the similarities between his homeland and England: a dry sense of humor, the tendency to arrogance, but also to keep things hidden.

Stravinsky's The Firebird

If composer Anatoly Lyadov had not been such a notorious slacker, we would never have known The Firebird in this form. Sergei Diaghilev, the Paris ballet impresario, withdrew a commission to Lyadov in 1909 and gave it to an unknown young Russian, Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky delivered a score that would make him world famous. This masterpiece gives the listener chills, warm hands ánd near-heart paralysis, when King Kastsjei begins his dance with a thunderclap. The concert begins with a new work by Gabriela Ortiz, Si el oxígeno fuera verde. Ortiz is Composer in Residence at The Concertgebouw this season, and this is the first concert in her residency.