The Feral Power of Igor Stravinsky's 4-Hand Piano Arrangement of "Le Sacre Du Printemps" ("The Rite of Spring")

We usually equate riots breaking out at concerts in our modern era when a rock concert is happening and never at a classical concert. Ok, we'll just ignore that fight between two audience members at a Boston Pops concert that the press picked up on earlier this year. That was probably due to alcohol, an internal fight over a girlfriend or something else presumably rare. Now that few musical surprises are left in the world--the thought of an audience rioting over the music itself in a concert is obviously lost to the annals of history. Only those intrigued with long-ago music history would probably know today about the infamous musical riots that occurred in 1913 Paris during the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps" with Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. That might surprise those who aren't aware of the initial French reaction to the violent sounds, dissonant harmonies (and the rhythmic pre-Elvis pelvic thrusts of the ballet dancers) of "Rite of Spring." When the French have been so far ahead from the rest of the world in the arts, imagining a small civil war happening in the audience among those who found the music appalling and those who supported it (yes, this is the real truth behind the riot)--places "Rite of Spring's" debut in an unparalleled bracket of history that'll likely forever stand alone. But what if that same audience had heard "Rite" played on a piano instead?