As was his usual practice with his larger works, Stravinsky extracted pieces of his "Tchaikovsky" ballet Divertimento from Le baiser de la fée (The Fairy's Kiss) (1928) to form a concert suite (recall also the suites from The Firebird and Petrushka). In the case of Le baiser de la fée, however, Stravinsky entitled the resulting work Divertimento. In fact, Stravinsky was not the first to extract pieces from the work to form a concert suite: Ernest Ansermet, Stravinsky's preferred conductor since he had given the premiere of Pulcinella (1919-20), performed a concert suite of dances from Le Baiser in Geneva in February 1931. Stravinsky's own Divertimento was completed in 1934 and has much the same form as Ansermet's concert suite.

Stravinsky's Divertimento is in four movements: 1. Sinfonia, 2. "Danses suisses," 3. Scherzo, and 4. Pas de deux, consisting of Adagio, Variation, and Coda. The Sinfonia is most of Scene One from the ballet. The "Danses suisses" is the first portion of Scene Two of the ballet. The Scherzo is a slightly shortened version of the opening of the third scene. The Pas de deux consists of the last three numbers of the ballet's Pas de deux with the Entrée omitted. The Divertimento is scored for an orchestra of the same size as that of Le Baiser: three each of flutes, oboes, and clarinets, and two bassoons; four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba; timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

Like Le baiser de la fée, Stravinsky's Divertimento is a pastiche work, a work that takes piano pieces and songs composed by Tchaikovsky and uses them as the raw material for Stravinsky's own work. In this case, Stravinsky has used not only Tchaikovsky's music but his style as well, and the work sounds like more of a collaboration between the two composers than Stravinsky's Pergolesi pastiche Pulcinella. Pastiche was a method of composition Stravinsky continued to use through his serial works of the 1950s and 1960s.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide