The Musical Times, June 1982

There can be no doubt that the strongest influence on composers of my generation was that of Stravinsky. That is not surprising when one recalls that he himself had a very thorough technical training before he left Russia from no less a musician than Rimsky-Korsakov. Its effect remained with him throughout his life in spite of the changes in idiom that his music underwent. Both as man and musician he was intensely purposeful. I knew him only slightly when I was a student in Paris, but his younger son, Soulima, was a friend, and through him I got to know the family. This would have been in the early 1930s. Stravinsky's reputation was by then firmly established; already, before World War I, his earlier works – Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring – had made an enormous impact. Stravinsky himself was then much influenced by Sergei Diagilev, the director of the Ballets Russes. Diagilev was much more than an impresario: he was very much a man of taste, having an understanding of both music and painting that enabled him to awaken the imagination of composers and artists and to draw out of them what he felt was there. When launching a new ballet, he took great pains over selecting the composer, the designer and the choreographer so that they could work productively together. A big man with greying hair and a majestic presence, he had great charm and the gift of inspiring others.