When a thin, high-strung little man mounted the conductor's stand in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall one evening last week, the big audience applauded cordially. Igor Stravinsky peered at them through his double-lensed glasses, curved his heavy lips in greeting. Though he was standing there for the first time in twelve years, few in the audience were unfamiliar with the man who, more than any other, had bent modern music to his will.
Igor Stravinsky became an overnight celebrity in Russia when he wrote Fireworks as a wedding present for Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter. Diaghilev commissioned him...