The Magical Music Box Music for the Royal Fireworks by Handel 22. On Thin Ice - Borodin's Polovtsian Dances 23. Fire-Bringers - Beethoven's Symphony No 5 24. The Captain's Curse - Nocturnes by Debussy 25. Eve of Battle - Solo Piano Pieces by Chopin 26. Black Angus - Overtures by Mendelssohn 27. The Imperial Robes - A Little Night Music by Mozart 28. Space Envoys - Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 29. Boomerang! - Symphonies Nos 5 and 6 by Mahler 30. Bird of Fire - Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite 31. Lost and Found - Robert Schumann's "Spring" Symphony 32. Pyramid of Khonsoul -
The Firebird was looking for fresh compositional talent. The ballet was the first of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes productions to have an all-original score composed for it. Alexandre Benois wrote in 1910 that he had two years earlier suggested to Diaghilev the production of a Russian nationalist ballet, an idea all the more attractive given both the newly awakened French passion for Russian dance and also the ruinously expensive costs of staging opera. The inspiration of mixing the mythical Firebird with the unrelated Russian tale of Koschei the Deathless possibly came from a popular child's verse by Yakov Polonsky, "A Winter's Journey"