Featured artists:
Pierre Boulez, Eliahu Inbal, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Sir Simon Rattle
Does any other composer of the 20th century offer such varied riches? If The Firebird, glowing with the iridescence of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, brought him his international breakthrough in 1910, The Rite of Spring sealed his fame and set him on the long path towards the terse archaism of Agon in 1957. Chameleon-like and with tireless creativity, Stravinsky kept pace with the aesthetic evolutions, convolutions and dislocations of his times. In his evocation of the Russia of history and prehistory, in the insolently virtuosic elegance of his pastiches, in his adaptations of Classical myths, in his rediscovery of his faith, and in his late conversion to serialism, he transformed every challenge into an opportunity.