When Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Orchestra recorded The Rite of Spring, they teamed Stravinsky’s ballet with spring-inspired pieces by Debussy and Rachmaninov. Their coupling for The Firebird is even more apt. Stravinsky was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov, and his first ballet, written in 1910, is close stylistically to his mentor’s lush exoticism. The opera Le Coq d’Or (The Golden Cockerel) was completed in 1907, a year before the composer’s death. The orchestral suite was put together posthumously by Glazounov and Steinberg. Both works are based on fairy tales and centre around magic birds: Stravinsky’s firebird who saves Prince Ivan, and Rimsky’s golden cockerel who crows when King Dodon is in danger. (And
he should know! At the end, he pecks the King to death.)