Kimmel Center Blog

Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre

Led by Valery Gergiev, the Kirov Orchestra returns to the Kimmel Center tonight for an all-Stravinsky program: the complete Firebird and The Rite of Spring. There's a fascinating article by Alex Ross about Gergiev from 1998:

“Westerners—we like to have a plan for life, some comforts, a sense of being settled. He is like a conqueror on the move.” Gergiev does not try to overcome this idea of ethnic difference; indeed, he manipulates it. He sometimes suggests that there is a kind of tribal, ritual aspect to his performances. “In my ‘Rite of Spring,’” he said at a New York Philharmonic rehearsal, “you can smell the blood.” These two inheritances from the past—the refined Petersburg phantasmagoria and the mountain culture of Ossetia—seem to correspond to the contrasting points of Gergiev’s artistic personality.

Update: The encores for Friday night's performance were Liadov's "Baba Yaga" and Rimsky-Korsakov's Dance from Snow Maiden