Initial performances – even Stravinsky's own – of this immensely complex score were often on the edge of collapse, but the piece is now part of the international orchestral repertoire and the greatest risk it faces today, paradoxically, is routine renditions which make a work which should shock seem safe and easy.
It's a trick he repeats with a little more brightness on the single Retrograde, whose backing is like some cyberpunk version of Ray Ellis's orchestral arrangements for Holiday.
A team of princely little conductors finally has somebody more obviously qualified to clash the cymbals at the end of its orchestral embroidering.
He studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris at the age of 15 and had his first major orchestral piece premiered at the Proms when he was still only 20.
One day I had unsupervised access to the family PC and, for reasons forgotten, an urge to hear the campy orchestral number from the film Austin Powers.
Nixon was speaking by phone from New York before she recently travelled to Maryland to discuss her clandestine work, before the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performed the orchestral track to West Side Story live as the classic movie played.
When West Side Story was presented at the Music Centre at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, and at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore recently, its orchestral track was performed live by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
It's one of the axioms of orchestral life that great orchestras need great halls in order to develop as an ensemble, and it's something that today's finest conductors have as a defining mission statement.
The big event this year is Berlioz's epic "Les Troyens", conducted by Zubin Mehta.Over the border in Austria, the most prestigious festival of all is Salzburg (July 21st-August 31st), or at least it ought to be, with its glittering mixture of opera, chamber music, solo recitals and orchestral concerts.
Conductors must have it, and musicians must recognise it, if they are to produce an original orchestral sound.
TO TWO generations of British singers and orchestral players, he is known as Charlie.
