The Firebird by Saint-Saëns, Shor, Alexey, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Thu 31 Oct 2024, From (2024/2024), Conductor Marios Papadopoulos, The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, United Kingdom

Music would never be the same after Igor Stravinsky unleashed The Firebird in 1910 – a ballet score that would herald the pictorial powers with which the composer would shock and enchant generations of theatregoers. Stravinsky found the perfect subject matter in the collision of the evil magician Kaschchei with the just and irrepressible Firebird. The suite of music from the ballet ends in an infernal dance ripe for Stravinsky’s own brand of violent syncopation. Marios Papadopoulos conducts it here, alongside wickedly entertaining music from Saint-Saëns, and an atmospheric mountain climb from Mussorgsky. The concert is complete with the virtuosic and lyrical concerto for violin and viola by Alexey Shor, our Composer-in-Residence, highlighting the instruments’ poetic qualities while seamlessly blending their technical brilliance and emotional depth.