Le Sacre du printemps

Both Le Sacre du Printemps and Varèse's Amériques shake the listener to their core. These groundbreaking works flipped music history on its head, becoming pillars of the modernist repertoire. ----- Igor Stravinsky led the way with Le Sacre. A lone bassoon begins, the orchestra takes over slowly building up until suddenly—BAM! CRASH!—the rhythms explode into a wild, hypnotic pulse that makes you want to move. Edgar Varèse cranked things up even more with Amériques, a percussive tour de force for a massive orchestra, with 14 percussionists. Its raw, seismic power was unmatched, sending shockwaves through the music world. Yet Varèse didn’t see himself as ahead of his time: “I’m on time, the people are behind.” Conductor duo Ilan Volkov and Concertgebouw-Maker Tom De Cock, a percussionist himself, each take on one of these kindred compositions.