ConcertPulse
Collon & Kuusisto
»The work of a crazy man.« »A thing made by idiots.« Wild comments for Stravinsky after his ‘Rite of Spring’ premiered in Paris in 1913. People jeered and hissed in the stalls; nothing more could be heard of the music. Respectable listeners clobbered each other. The police reported that 27 people were injured at the »massacre« (Debussy) and Jean Cocteau, who was in attendance, noted that »a countess’s diadem was askew«. What was once a shocker transformed into a classic of modernism. What better recommendation could there be?