THE FIREBIRD

Daniel Kidane’s Sun Poem was co-commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, and receives its United States premiere this week. The piece was inspired by the work of Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, whose book by the same name “explores the male history of [Barbados] as it passes from father to son.” Kidane took this as inspiration as he recently became a father himself. “For me it is to do with the states of fatherhood,” he said, “the idea of excitement but also trepidation and worrying.”

Jean Sibelius’s Luonnotar sets a Finnish creation myth from the Kalevala, a collection of ancient runes that became the national epic. Luonnotar is a primordial feminine “spirit of Nature” who gives birth at sea and meets a bird whose eggs become the entire cosmos. Sibelius’s challenging writing for the solo soprano mixes austere incantation with stretches of soaring lyricism.

The Firebird was Igor Stravinsky’s first success—a ballet based on Slavic folklore for the Ballets Russes in Belle Époque Paris. Prince Ivan Tsarevich faces Kaschei, a monstrous king whose immortality is protected by a magic egg. The Firebird is captured by Prince Ivan, and it gives him an enchanted feather in return for its freedom. Later, when Ivan is taken captive by Kaschei, the feather summons the Firebird who helps defeat the tyrant. Stravinsky’s magnificent score was deeply rooted in Russian folk song and opera, while also discovering new colors and rhythms that would influence orchestral music forever after.