the Moor, the Ballerina, and the tragic Petrushka.
About several Stravinsky works, conductors and connoisseurs alike love to debate, Which version? In the dramatic case of Petrushka, the differences between the original 1911 version and its 1947 revision are particularly stark. But, passionate opinion aside (and I’ll surely discuss my own at some point in this space), what to do if you show up to conduct one version, only to find out six minutes before the first downbeat that the orchestra has prepared the "other"? No prizes for guessing who experienced that particular shock earlier this week in Nizhniy Novgorod. Thankfully, I happened to have both scores with me, since I will be conducting the 1947 next season in Phoenix and have been mulling the differences. But having to prepare my 1947 score for actual performance in a very brief period of time reminded me of another time-honoured debate, between the somewhat loosey-goosey advocates of double-checking (which I had done) and the truly compulsive proponents of triple-checking. Score one for the latter.