This was a concert broadcast live from the Royal Festival Hall in London, in which Pierre Boulez conducts the Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus in a programme of music by Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. 

The concert is introduced by Michael Berkeley and opened "Sounding the Century", Radio 3's two-year retrospective of 20th-century music. 

The programme features THE NIGHTINGALE, an exotic opera based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen which deals with the triumph of a live bird over its mechanical equivalent, and the brief but elusive piece THE KING OF THE STARS. Both of these are sung in Russian with English subtitles. 

The programme concludes with a performance of the ballet score THE RITE OF SPRING. 

The interval feature looks at the history of Boulez's career, including the fouding of IRCAM and his time running the BBC Symphony Orchestra. 
Conductor: Pierre Boulez 
Music By: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky 

Introduced By: Michael Berkeley 
Director: Barrie Gavin 

Nightingale (soprano): Ewa Malas-Godlewska 
Death (alto): Helene Perraguin 
Emperor (baritone): Jean-Luc Chaignaud 
Cook (soprano): Wendy Hoffman 
Bonze (bass): Askar Abdrazakov 
Chamberlain (bass): Neal Davies 
Fisherman (tenor): Wolfgang Bunten