Petrouchka: Score (Boosey & Hawkes Masterworks Library)

In his memoirs, Stravinsky recalled that he had a "distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios." Soon he began to associate this with Ptrouchka; the central character from nineteenth-century Russian puppet shows. This "droll, ugly, sentimental, shifting personage" was essentially an anarchic jester, related to the commedia dell'arte tradition. The scenario places the Ptrouchka show in the center of a Shrovetide Fair in St. Petersburg in the 1830s. Only the puppets - the seductive ballerina, the jealous Moor, and above all Ptrouchka - are individualized and capable of real emotion, while the swirling crowds of merrymakers are, ironically, themselves like puppets in the grip of forces they do not understand. Ptrouchka has become more of a sad clown, like a Pierrot: a disillusioned idealist, luckless lover, and victim. Only at the end, when his ghost terrifies the puppet-master, does he reappear as an eternal spirit of mockery. Premiered by Nijinsky with Diaghelev's Ballets Russes, Ptrouchka is a virtuosic combination of Russian folksongs, street-songs, a French vaudeville, and Viennese waltzes.

In 1947 Stravinsky revised the work for smaller orchestra, extensively re-instrumenting it in the process. This version concludes with a "concert ending," which was devised in 1911 for use with extracts from the full ballet.