The premiere performance of Igor Stravinsky's first ballet, The Firebird, by the Ballet Russe at the Paris Opera House on June 25, 1910 was the kind of sensational, career-changing event that a composer can really hope for only once in a lifetime It is something of a tribute to Stravinsky's vitality that he managed to carve out several such sensations in just a few years. Stravinsky was almost instantly elevated from unknown status into the ranks of Europe's foremost up and coming musicians, and, following the practice of the day, he immediately set about expanding the success of the forty-five minute ballet by extracting a twenty-minute symphonic suite from it. This Firebird Suite No. 1 (there would eventually be three suites in all) contains five movements of music taken from various places in the original score: 1) an Introduction (containing "The Enchanted Garden of Kashchei" and "Dance of the Firebird"), 2) "The Firebird's supplication," 3) "The Princesses' Game with the Golden Apples," 4) "The Princesses' Khorovod," and 5) the famous "Infernal Dance of Kashchei's Subjects."

While neither the orchestration nor the basic musical detail have undergone significant alterations during the translation from full score to symphonic suite, there are a few cuts in the middle of some of the movements. For instance, in the Introduction, which contains musical numbers i through iv of the ballet, minus some thirty-eight measures that appear only in the full score. New concert endings have been provided for "The Firebird's Supplication" (which would otherwise lead directly into "The Appearance of the Thirteen," which of course doesn't appear at all in the Suite) and the scherzo-like "The Princesses' Game with the Golden Apples" (to solve a similar problem). The rest of the music, including the rambunctious "Infernal Dance" is absolutely unchanged from its original 1910 incarnation—not at all the case with either the Second or the Third Firebird Suites, in which Stravinsky makes marked changes, especially in the area of instrumentation.

Of course, these five movements of music can showcase only highlights from the ballet. The radiant finale is particularly missed in the First Suite, thankfully, Stravinsky includes it in the Second. We can assume that only tradition and pressure from his publisher induced Stravinsky to cut up his work in such a way. No concert suites were ever drawn from Petrushka or The Rite of Spring, his next two ballets, the composer instead demanding, quite understandably, that his music be heard either in its entirety or not at all.

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