Petrushka is one of three innovative ballets composed by Igor Stravinsky during his ‘Russian’ period. With Petrushka, Stravinsky showed his neo-folkloric side and brought a colourful street crowd with a magician and his puppets, merchants and mummies to the ballet stage. In doing so, he showed the world that funfair and classical music are not contradictory, and his audience now heard folk music from a new perspective.

Abbado’s recording with the London Symphony orchestra was first released from digital 2-track in 1981: This is one of the few Deutsche Grammophon productions from 1980 in which digital 2-track and analogue 8-track were recorded in parallel. Both versions were cut, but only the digital 2-track version was issued at the time. By using the analogue 8-track master, this release now makes the recording available in purely analogue form for the very first time.