Petrushka

A flute plays its tune over clarinets and horns, which rock between alternating fifths and thirds in imitation of an accordion. Four solo cellos enter.

The organ-grinder’s music repeatedly interrupts the crowd music. The tempo slows to Meno mosso, and a small wind group takes over: flutes play the figure of the turning handle and clarinets play the tune. A street dancer beside him beats time on a triangle.

At the other end of the stage a second dancer starts her music box. The first dancer plays her triangle, and the two acts continue at the same time. Benois and Stravinsky set this competition for customers within the larger fair scene.

The organ-grinder and music box stop. The barker resumes his sales pitch, and the dancing crowd returns. Stravinsky alternates the barker’s hurried announcements with the revellers’ tune from earlier.

Two drummers call the crowd to the puppet theatre. The tempo slows to Lento for the magician’s entrance. Bassoons play low, the double basses pluck, and celesta and harp play short descending figures.

At rehearsal 31, headed “The Magician Plays the Flute” in the score, the flute plays a cadenza after the music of the fair stops. Its runs rise and turn back down. Stravinsky marks it ad libitum, ma non accelerando, meaning freely, without speeding up.

On 13 April 1912 Debussy wrote to Stravinsky about this music, calling it “a sort of magic in sound, a mysterious transformation of mechanical souls that become human”. He praised the magician’s music in particular.

Petrushka, the Ballerina and the Moor dance together. The piano plays chords with the woodwinds while the strings play pizzicato beneath them. The tempo is Allegro giusto, after the magician’s flute solo in free time.

In 1910 Diaghilev visited Stravinsky in Clarens, expecting sketches for The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky played him music for piano and orchestra about a puppet, with furious piano arpeggios set against the orchestra. Diaghilev asked for a whole ballet, and the piano kept a leading part in the score.

A foot kicks Petrushka through the door. Two clarinets play arpeggios on C major and F♯ major together for his cry. The piano takes up the figure and runs it up and down the keyboard.

Petrushka’s room has black cardboard walls painted with stars and a crescent moon. A portrait of the magician hangs above the hole the puppet punches in the wall.

The loud outburst stops. A piano run climbs into the Adagietto, where flutes repeat soft short figures and the xylophone plays with the piano’s high notes. Brass and strings rest.

Stravinsky wrote music for this unhappy puppet at the piano before the fairground scenes existed. By his own account, the piece he played to Diaghilev became the second tableau of Petrushka, and the rest of the ballet was built around it.

The Ballerina enters, and Petrushka tries to impress her. At Allegro, piano runs alternate with short wind phrases, and the metre changes from bar to bar. In the scenario his leaps alarm her, and she leaves.

The two clarinets bring back Petrushka’s cry in a slow cadenza. C major and F♯ major still sound together. The curtain closes on the same pair of chords that is associated with him at the beginning.

Offstage drums separate the scenes. Wind chords and plucked strings enter, marked Feroce stringendo (fierce and pressing forward). The bowed strings then begin heavy, swooping figures.

The tempo slows to Sostenuto. Bassoons and tuba play low in the orchestra, and plucked strings and percussion set a steady beat. Clarinet and bass clarinet play the main tune, doubled an octave apart.

Benois gave this puppet a low sofa, a magnificent robe and paper walls painted with palms and exotic fruit. He plays with a coconut.

The Ballerina enters carrying a toy brass instrument. Her dance opens with solo cornet and military drum, the cornet playing a quick tune over short drum strokes.

The waltz begins with an accompaniment on solo bassoon, marked grottesco. Cornet and flute take the melody. The tunes are borrowed from Joseph Lanner.

The Ballerina’s waltz is in three beats to the bar. Underneath it, her partner continues his heavy dance in two. Cor anglais and contrabassoon double the lower strings in his tune, and her melody continues above.

The couple listen. Stopped horns and muted trumpets enter during the waltz, and Petrushka’s cry grows louder among them. He appears, and the quarrel begins.

The Ballerina runs away from the fight. The Moor drives Petrushka out of his room, and the curtain falls. Outside, the fair carries on into the evening.

The drums roll again and the curtain opens on the fair at dusk. The crowd’s dance returns in winds, brass and strings. After the two puppet rooms of the middle tableaux, the stage fills with people.

Stravinsky’s concerto-like piece for piano and orchestra, composed in Switzerland in 1910, showed a puppet, suddenly alive, cavorting up the keyboard until the orchestra exploded. It ended, he wrote, in “the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.” Diaghilev visited expecting The Rite sketches, heard it and urged a ballet.

Bassoons bustle above plucked strings, and an oboe sings Down the Petersky Road. The nursemaids’ tune is an old Russian song. It starts modestly, then passes to the horns and spreads through the orchestra.

At the first performance, in Paris on 13 June 1911, Nijinsky danced Petrushka and Tamara Karsavina the Ballerina. Pierre Monteux conducted. Benois designed the sets and costumes, and Fokine choreographed the puppets and the large crowd.

The crowd makes room for a peasant with a performing bear. High clarinets play the peasant’s pipe, and a solo tuba plays the bear. The two parts lie several octaves apart.

A merchant arrives with two women dancers, throws banknotes to the crowd and plays his accordion.

At rehearsal 108, Moderato, clarinets and horns repeat a heavy pattern over tuba and timpani, and the strings play chords marked pesante. This is the dance of the coachmen and grooms. The nursemaids join them at rehearsal 112, adding a second tune.

This recording uses Stravinsky’s original 1911 score. After the second tableau the piano is scarcely heard again. When Stravinsky rescored the ballet in 1946–⁠47, he reduced the woodwind and brass and gave the piano considerably more to play.

The masqueraders arrive by Bengal lights. Flutes exchange short phrases above celesta and two harps, and strings and clarinets then take over the running figures. In the original scenario, Death appears among the masks and invites the crowd to dance.

Muted trumpets and cornets play cries from the puppet theatre. Petrushka runs into the fair with the Moor in pursuit, and the Ballerina tries to hold the Moor back. The dance is followed by a chase.

Petrushka falls with his head broken. The tempo slows to Lento. Two piccolos play softly above divided violas, and a clarinet plays a short phrase marked dolcissimo, while snow begins to fall and the crowd gathers around him.

A policeman fetches the magician. He picks up Petrushka’s body and shakes it, showing the crowd that it is a wooden puppet stuffed with sawdust. The crowd disperses.

After the magician has shown the crowd a lifeless doll, Petrushka’s shadow appears above the theatre, thumbing its nose. Two trumpets with metal mutes play his cry, and the magician flees. A few plucked string notes close the ballet.