The Savage is Loose

The soundtrack to the book about the year that shaped the rest of the century. Pop was everything in 1966. It was a way of looking at the world, all funnelled into the single: ideas, attitudes, lyrics and experimentation that in the more indulgent years to come would be stretched out into a whole album. Condensed within the 7-inch format, the possibilities of 1966 were expressed with an extraordinary electricity and intensity – whether it be the flourishing of Holland-Dozier-Holland at Motown, the breakthrough of black American dance culture, the start of psychedelia and the beginnings of rock, or just simple mod pop.

The work was premiered on May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, as a staged production of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with Pierre Monteux conducting. Monteux also led the first SFS performances of the original 1913 version in February 1939. Over the years the score has appeared in various revisions. This performance uses the edition marked “Revised 1947; New edition 1967,” brought out by Boosey & Hawkes, which had just acquired the work’s copyright.