Editing The Rite of Spring (section)

=== Concert performances ===
On 18 February 1914 ''The Rite'' received its first concert performance (the music without the ballet), in Saint Petersburg under [[Serge Koussevitzky]].<ref>Hill, p. 8</ref> On 5 April that year, Stravinsky experienced for himself the popular success of ''Le Sacre'' as a concert work, at the Casino de Paris. After the performance, again under Monteux, the composer was carried in triumph from the hall on the shoulders of his admirers.<ref name=Vdt6>Van den Toorn, p. 6</ref> ''The Rite'' had its first British concert performance on 7 June 1921, at the [[Queen's Hall]] in London under [[Eugene Aynsley Goossens|Eugene Goossens]]. Its American premiere occurred on 3 March 1922, when Stokowski included it in a Philadelphia Orchestra programme.<ref>Smith, p. 94</ref> Goossens was also responsible for introducing ''The Rite'' to Australia on 23 August 1946 at the Sydney Town Hall, as guest conductor of the [[Sydney Symphony Orchestra]].<ref>{{cite web|title= Australian Composition 1945–1959|url= http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/guides/1945-1959|first = Clinton |last=Green|publisher=[[Australian Music Centre]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |title=Sydney To Hear 'Rite of Spring{{'-}} |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/29765069/996073 |date=22 August 1946 |page=5 |via=[[Trove]]}}</ref>

Stravinsky first conducted the work in 1926, in a concert given by the [[Concertgebouw Orchestra]] in Amsterdam;<ref name=VdT39 /><ref>Stravinsky 1962, p. 129</ref> two years later he brought it to the [[Salle Pleyel]] in Paris for two performances under his baton. Of these occasions he later wrote that "thanks to the experience I had gained with all kinds of orchestras&nbsp;... I had reached a point where I could obtain exactly what I wanted, as I wanted it".<ref>Stravinsky 1962, p. 137</ref> Commentators have broadly agreed that the work has had a greater impact in the concert hall than it has on the stage; many of Stravinsky's revisions to the music were made with the concert hall rather than the theatre in mind.<ref>{{cite web|last=Freed|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Freed|title=The Rite of Spring: About the work|url=https://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/2841|publisher=[[The Kennedy Center]]|date=20 November 2004|access-date=16 December 2019}}</ref> The work has become a staple in the repertoires of all the leading orchestras, and has been cited by [[Leonard Bernstein]] as "the most important piece of music of the 20th century".<ref name=Bernstein>{{cite news|last=Willsher|first=Kim|title=Rite that caused riots: celebrating 100 years of ''The Rite of Spring''|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/may/27/rite-of-spring-100-years-stravinsky|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=27 May 2013|access-date=19 March 2021}}</ref>

In 1963, 50 years after the premiere, Monteux (then aged 88) agreed to conduct a commemorative performance at London's [[Royal Albert Hall]]. According to [[Isaiah Berlin]], a close friend of the composer, Stravinsky informed him that he had no intention of hearing his music being "murdered by that frightful butcher". Instead he arranged tickets for that particular evening's performance of [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]'s opera ''[[The Marriage of Figaro]]'', at [[Royal Opera House|Covent Garden]]. Under pressure from his friends, Stravinsky was persuaded to leave the opera after the first act. He arrived at the Albert Hall just as the performance of ''The Rite'' was ending;{{refn|group=n|In a different account of the incident, the music historian [[Richard Morrison (music critic)|Richard Morrison]] writes that Stravinsky arrived at the end of the first part, rather than at the end of the piece.<ref>Morrison, pp. 137–138</ref>}} composer and conductor shared a warm embrace in front of the unaware, wildly cheering audience.<ref>Hill, p. 102</ref> Monteux's biographer John Canarina provides a different slant on this occasion, recording that by the end of the evening Stravinsky had asserted that "Monteux, almost alone among conductors, never cheapened ''Rite'' or looked for his own glory in it, and he continued to play it all his life with the greatest fidelity".<ref>Canarina, p. 301</ref>