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         >> I.F. Stravinsky.
IGOR FEODOROVICH STRAVINSKY was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), a Baltic resort near St Petersburg, on 5 June (17 June, New Style) 1882, the third son of Feodor Stravinsky, one of the principal basses at the aryinsky (later Kirov) Theatre in St Petersburg. Stravinsky's musical education began with piano lessons at home when he was ten; he later studied law at St Petersburg University and music theory with Fyodor Akimenko and Vassily Kalafati. His most important teacher, though, was Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied informally from the age of twenty, taking regular lessons from 1905 until 1908.
Although Stravinsky's first substantial composition was a 'Symphony in E flat', written in 1906 under the tutelage of Rimsky-Korsakov, it was 'The Firebird', a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered by his Ballets Russes in Paris in 1910, that brought Stravinsky into sudden international prominence. In the next year he consolidated his reputation with 'Petrushka', like 'The Firebird' a transformation of something essentially Russian into a work of surprising modernity.
A rapid succession of works – 'The Nightingale', an opera, in 1914, 'Renard' in 1915, 'The Soldier's Tale' in 1918, the 'Symphonies of Wind Instruments' two years after that – all reinforced his aesthetic dominance. The explicitly Russian flavour of his music – played out in the 'Symphonies of Wind Instruments' (1920), the opera buffa 'Mavra' (1922) and 'Les Noces' (1923), for four solo voices, chorus and an orchestra consisting of four pianos and percussion – now gave way to a more refined neo-classicism, beginning with the ballet 'Pulcinella' (1920), for which Stravinsky went back to the music of Pergolesi, reworking it into something completely personal.
1920 was also the year that Stravinsky settled in France, taking French citizenship in 1934. Stravinsky expected to be elected to a vacant seat in the Académie française following Dukas' death in 1935, and felt rebuffed when Florent Schmitt was elected in his stead. His ties to his adopted homeland were further loosened when, in a mere eight months, from November 1938, Stravinsky suffered the deaths of his daughter Lyudmilla, aged only 29, his mother and then his wife (and cousin) Catherine ( née Nossenko); faced with an imminent war in Europe, Stravinsky and his second-wife-to-be Vera Sudeikin ( née de Bosset) emigrated to the United States. After a year spent on the East Coast, including a stint as a lecturer at Harvard University, he and Vera soon settled in California, which they were to make their home for the rest of their lives.
'Pulcinella' turned out to be only the first of many works in which, over the next two decades, Stravinsky subdued the music of the past to his own purposes, among them the 'divertimento' 'The Fairy's Kiss', derived from Tchaikovsky, and the ballet 'Apollon Musagète', both premiered in 1928. Two choral-orchestral works – the oratorio 'Oedipus Rex' (1927) and the 'Symphony of Psalms' (1930) – showed that he could also work on an epic scale; and it was not long before he tackled a purely orchestral 'Symphony in C' (1938), which was followed within four years by the 'Symphony in Three Movements'. With 'Perséphone' (1934), 'Jeu de Cartes' (1936) and 'Orpheus' (1946), the series of ballets also continued, generally in collaboration with George Balanchine, a partnership as important to dance in the twentieth century as Tchaikovsky's and Petipa's had been in the nineteenth. Stravinsky's neo-classical period culminated in 1951 in his three-act opera 'The Rake's Progress', to a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman.
The chief works from Stravinsky's late serial flowering are 'Threni', for six solo voices, chorus and orchestra (1958), 'The Flood', a 'musical play for soloists, chorus and orchestra' (1962), the 'Sacred ballad 'Abraham and Isaac' (1963), 'Variations for Orchestra' (1964) and 'Requiem Canticles' (1966).
Stravinsky was also active as a performer of his own music, initially as a pianist but increasingly as a conductor. The first among contemporary composers to do so, he left a near-complete legacy of recordings of his own music, released then on CBS and now to be found on Sony Classical. His conducting career continued until 1967, when advancing age and illness forced him to retire from the concert platform. His tenuous grasp on life finally broke on 6 April 1971, in New York, and his body was flown to Venice for burial on the island of San Michele, near to the grave of Diaghilev.

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Denomination: 150 Rubles Year: 1993 Material: Platinum Description: Commemorative coin 'I.F. Stravinsky'. Obverse: The Emblem of the Bank of Russia (the two headed eagle designed by I.Bilibin), the letters under it indicate the metal sign, the fineness, the mint trademark and the fine metal content. The inscriptions along the rim framed by a circle of dots: at the top – '150 РУБЛЕЙ 1993 г.' (150 RUBLES 1993), at the bottom – 'БАНК РОССИИ' (BANK OF RUSSIA). Reverse: The picture of I.F. Stravinsky with a scene from his ballet 'Petrouchka' in the background, to the left – a lyre and laurel branch. The inscriptions along the rim: at the top – 'РОССИЯ И МИРОВАЯ КУЛЬТУРА' (RUSSIA AND WORLD CULTURE), at the bottom – 'И.Ф.СТРАВИНСКИЙ' (I.F. STRAVINSKY). 999 standard platinum. Diameter – 28.6 mm, weight – 15.67 g. Edge – incised. Put in circulation since 13.12.1993. Artist and sculptor: A.V. Baklanov. Mintage: 3 000. The coin was struck at the Leningrad Mint (ЛМД). FMM hasn't got this coin. Country or town: Russian Federation

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