Kensington Symphony Orchestra begins its 2025/26 season with a performance of Stravinsky’s complete ballet The Firebird. 

Written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the work – described as “a supreme example of how music can evoke a mood” – catapulted Stravinsky to international fame. Inspired by Russian fairy tales, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who enlists the help of the magical Firebird to battle the evil Koschei in his castle.  

The concert opens with New York-based composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s As Though Birds (2013), conceived as three one-minute variations and inspired by the writings of French art critic and anarchist Félix Fénéon and contemporary poet Jonathan Dubow. 

KSO also performs Martinů’s Les fresques de Piero della Francesca (1955), which pays homage to the Italian artist’s cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross (around 1452-66), an early Renaissance masterpiece that Martinů had admired in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1954. 

Described as “one of the very best amateur groups in the country” by Classical Music magazine, KSO has been hailed by Classical Source for “putting on bold, adventurous programmes that few of the ‘big five’ in London would either think of or get away with. “