Symphony Exploder wants to start a riot with The Rite of Spring

At The Rite of Spring's Paris premiere in 1913, the audience rioted. The broken rhythms, repetitive notes and clashing chords of Igor Stravinsky's masterpiece shocked the patrons of the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées, who howled in displeasure.

"It was music which was not beautiful," says Gustavo Gimeno, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) music director. "The dancers on the stage couldn't even hear the music, which was coming from the orchestra, because there were so many emotions in the audience reacting to it."

This is the kind of story that Hrishikesh Hirway unearths when he interviews musicians, such as Dua Lipa and R.E.M., on his podcast and TV show, Song Exploder.

On Friday, April 5, Hirway will be riffing on his own work when he hosts "Symphony Exploder," in Toronto, where he'll dissect Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring with Gimeno. 

"The Rite of Spring is such a complex piece, musically, which made it a great candidate for something like this," Hirway says via email. 

"Symphony Exploder" will only be available for that one night, and it won't be recorded for Song Exploder. For Hirway, the "grandeur" of the TSO playing the music live in Roy Thomson Hall would "get lost" in a podcast recording.

Hirway has hosted live events before (including one at Toronto's Hot Docs Podcast Festival), but he's used to being able to edit his podcast and TV shows to focus on the musicians' voice, rather than his own. 

"The pressure is a little amped up when there's an audience, watching me juggle my notes and my thoughts and keep the pace and energy of the conversation moving," Hirway says. "Plus, I had to get a tux!"

"Symphony Exploder" adapts Song Exploder's signature format of a musician breaking down their song's creation to Hirway. But since Stravinsky died in 1971, Gimeno will take his place as guest expert. The TSO opened their 2023/2024 season by playing The Rite of Spring, and Gimeno is intimately familiar with the piece. Gimeno is currently the music director of both the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg and Madrid's Teatro Real. He is also an accomplished conductor, having led symphonies in San Francisco, Berlin and Tokyo. 

Each Song Exploder episode also features isolated parts of the song in question to illustrate the musician's explanations of how they wrote it. It then ends by playing the full song. The tradition will continue for "Symphony Exploder," but the TSO will play these isolated parts live (rather than as digital recordings). The orchestra will also play The Rite of Spring in its full 33 minutes. 

"The experience of listening to it after the conversation and breakdown will open up people's ears and change how they hear it," Hirway says. 

Gimeno will break down how each part of the orchestra contributes to different parts of The Rite of Spring. For instance, audiences will just hear the bassoons play on their own, then just the cellos, then just the percussion. Then, they'll all play together. 

"That's something you never experience because normally you go to a concert and you experience all layers," Gimeno says. "This is a microscopic analysis of how these layers are forming a total." 

Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring as an orchestral piece to accompany a ballet which tells the story of a virgin girl who dances herself to death as part of a ritual sacrifice to usher in springtime. 

"Some other composers probably didn't completely understand, but some others, they thought and they realized, 'This is genius,'" Gimeno says. "Like all great masterpieces in history, sooner or later, they made their way." 

The Rite of Spring has gone on to influence just about every composer since. The music also cemented itself into popular culture, thanks to Walt Disney featuring it in the 1940 version of Fantasia.

"It's music which doesn't leave you indifferent," Gimeno says. "No matter if you are an expert, a connoisseur — if you are a child, an adult. It's really so engaging. So powerful. Such strong music."

The orchestra feels this too. Gimeno says that because the music is so intense, the members of the orchestra must balance the emotions of the piece with the technical prowess required to play it. 

This piece proves particularly difficult in its last minutes, when the sacrificial maiden dances herself to death. 

"When you get to the very end and you know that there are two minutes left and you think, 'Come on, keep on going, just keep focused,'" Gimeno says. "You feel the emotions of the sacrifice."