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It often seems to me that this score forms such a monumental role in musical history that certain aspects of its genesis as a ballet score can be forgotten. Stravinsky knew the world of the Maryinsky theatre intimately. His father was a bass singer in the Imperial opera (and in fact created the role of Father Frost in Rimsky Korsakov's operatic treatment of the legend of the Snow Maiden). Not only that, but Stravinsky père knew Petipa well, and the composer wrote in one of his autobiographical works of seeing Sleeping Beauty when he was 8 or 9 years of age. Since the composer was born in 1882, it can be seen how steeped he was in the traditions of the Maryinsky.

The Rite of Spring is such a powerful icon of early 20th century music that the stories surrounding its first performance are inevitably etched deeply into the folklore of musical history. Certainly the well-known accounts of the riots that greeted the premiere in Paris in 1913 show that the audiences that had grown accustomed to the often colourful and exotic ways of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes found this a step too far. However, the London premiere that followed was given a more controlled reception, and that for the time being was that as far as productions of the work as a theatre piece were concerned. Within a relatively short time, the world changed. The Ballets Russes somehow continued to exist during the 1st World War, engaging in strenuous tours to the Americas. It was on one such trip, to South America, that Nijinsky had suddenly announced his engagement to a Hungarian dancer with the company, Romola de Pulszky; they were married in Buenos Aires soon after the company arrived there in the autumn of 1913. Back in Europe during the war years, the company was inevitably in a parlous and fragmented state. However, a tour to the USA was planned. Despite the fact that Diaghilev's immediate reaction to the news of Nijinsky's marriage had been to dispense with his services when the company had returned to Europe, Diaghilev found that he needed to re-engage the star that American audiences wanted to see during the tour of early 1916. The company would in any case be without Karsavina (who was pregnant) and Fokine (who had left and was now active in military service in Russia). But there was no mention of The Rite of Spring. Nijinsky's choreography was seemingly lost forever.

When the ballet was revived after the War in 1920 it was to new choreography by Massine (but still using the Roerich décor), an interpretation that Stravinsky highly approved because he considered that Massine was able to think in phrases when interpreting the score. It was this version that then became known further afield; Massine staged it again in Philadelphia in 1930 (with Martha Graham in the principal role) and revived it for several companies. But the chic world of post-war Paris, where Massine's production saw the light of day, was poles apart from the Paris of 1913, and in any case the score had by then become a familiar part of the orchestral repertory; as a concert work it had scored a notable triumph in April 1914.

Millicent Hodson's epic work in re-establishing as far as possible Nijinsky's original ideas are therefore all the more welcome; an opportunity for imagining something of just what it must have been like for those audiences in the heady days of 1913 watching this new era unfold. The fact that we are now able to see the dancers of the Kirov reclaim this territory makes us grateful for the times in which we live.

But how much was new? Nijinsky's choreographic ideas of course, as he contrived to evolve a response to the earthiness of Stravinsky's score; a grounded style of dance mixed with sudden turns and two-footed jumps, together with patterns that involve much use of groups in circles (and not only in the section entitled Spring Rounds). In the words of Marie Rambert (who participated in the first production), "Nijinsky again first of all established the basic position: feet very turned in, knees slightly bent, arms held in reverse of the classical position, a primitive, prehistoric posture". Stravinsky's music also seemed to be everything that an iconoclastic artist could achieve; it wasn't only a character on stage being sacrificed, but centuries of orchestral tradition seemed also to be in danger of being swept away. But then I think again of Stravinsky's early life in the shadow of the Maryinsky, and his acute awareness of ballet tradition. Although he later wrote that he would not, in his early years, have considered it possible that a new artistic movement could be born out of the ballet world because it appeared that the art-form had become too stultified (he later said that this wouldn't have happened without Diaghilev), I find a distinctive thread in the Rite of Spring that extends back, perhaps surprisingly, to Giselle.

Just consider the parallels: a ballet in two contrasting parts, one concerned with earthly matters and the other with a more mystical world. Listening to the opening of the second act (or second tableau) of The Rite of Spring (descriptive of the mystical circles of the girls from whom the victim will be chosen), I am always struck by this sudden transportation into another realm. But there are further parallels. There is a day and night contrast between the two parts of the work, and of course the events of the night lead to the untimely end of a young woman, terrifyingly caught up in events beyond her control. (The story of Giselle, of course, is based on Heine, but didn't he derive his ideas from Slav legend?).

Just as I find this combination of tradition and change in the structure of the ballet, there are elements in Stravinsky's score that have long been identified as springing out of certain aspects of 19th century tradition, despite the fact that it seems to sweep away all that has gone before. These concern the development of a national consciousness in musical composition, as a reaction against the established hegemony of German and Austrian composers (together with the world of Italian opera). As Europe re-shaped itself in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, it was natural for a country such as Russia to assert its own identity in artistic endeavours. In musical terms, this meant the emergence of a tradition that looked to the roots of Russian folk idiom for its inspiration. Encouraged by Glinka, the work of Balakirev and the four other composers associated with him (collectively known as "The mighty handful", or various other translations of the Russian title – moguchaya kuchka - by which they were styled) established the development of a school of composition based on the repetitive motivs of Russian folk music, with their distinctive colouring.

The Rite of Spring is built up from many such folk-like motivs. To what degree Stravinsky quoted from actual folk melodies in The Rite is a matter of argument; it is said that he did, but he denied that he did so. However his own style was so completely at one with any folk material that he could incorporate any folk fragments with his own music effortlessly. With their comparatively restricted compass, and constant re-working with changing orchestration, they invite the kind of choreographic interpretation we are now able to share with the audiences of 1913. The musical structure of The Rite of Spring may appear at first to some as being haphazard, but not so. It is just that Stravinsky's methods rely on different ways of finding a balance between repetition and variety compared with the accepted techniques of symphonic development found in the mainstream of classical tradition before he shook the musical world.

Besides the repetition of folk-like fragments, there is much use of repeated chord patterns (ostinato technique) that, in Stravinsky's hands, adopts a bewildering rhythmic complexity as well as kaleidoscopic orchestration to maintain variety, and - therefore - interest. Sometimes these rhythmic patterns are used for their own sake, accompanying nothing. There is no more famous example of this than the pulsating opening of the Dances of the Adolescents, with its constantly shifting accents (well known to many through its use in Walt Disney's Fantasia). In fact the time signature doesn't change here; the music is written in a straightforward two beats in a bar, but with accents spattered about like confetti. Curiously, last night's programme entitled this section as Dance of the Maidens. Musically, this section of the score is in a two part form, the first containing the heavy accents, but the second introducing a gentler melody. The music was written in this way as the first part of the section shows the male part of the tribe spinging to life, while the contrast that follows introduces a group of girls. Stravinsky wrote his music to a scenario, and it was such a joy to be able to see how the original concept of this composer with such a feel for dance might have been realised in its premiere. By the same token, the Round Dances of Spring are just that (and the round dance was such an important part of Russian folk tradition). There were also other parts of the score highlighted with a sure theatrical touch, for example the sudden appearance of a group of males during the sacrificial dance, appearing to celebrate as the victim weakens, and moving in as braying horns blaze forth above the welter of orchestral sound, almost giving voice to their whoops of exultation.

A glimpse of the sacrificial dance itself (danced by Deborah Bull) was shown on a TV documentary soon after this re-construction of Nijinsky's work had been completed. I thought then of the powerful images portraying something deeply disturbing. This is no simple act of theatrical frenzy; limbs weaken, and then contort into a frozen state. Within a few years of this choreography, Nijinsky gave one of his last performances, a solo recital in St Moritz at the end of the war for his friends. But this was no lighthearted affair; quite the opposite. Nijinsky chose as his theme the tragedy of war, blaming those who did not prevent it as being responsible for its death and destruction. In the words of Romola in her biography of her husband, the dance "was terrifying". "Sometimes" she said "it vaguely reminded me of that scene in Petruchka when the puppet tries to escape his fate. He seemed to fill the room with horror-stricken suffering humanity. It was tragic; his gestures were all monumental, and he entranced us so that we almost saw him floating over corpses". Soon after that, Nijinsky's world descended into darkness, his mind shattered; the mental instability that had threatened now manifested itself clearly. What had been the make up of this incredible creative mind is hard to judge.

In rehearsal, the sacrificial dance was seen many times by Marie Rambert. She watched as he repeated it over and again for Maria Piltz. In the words of Marie Rambert, "her reproduction was very pale by comparison with his ecstatic performance, which was the greatest tragic dance I have ever seen".

It is worth remembering why Marie Rambert was engaged by Diaghilev to help Nijinsky interpret Stravinsky's score. She had no great love for classical ballet in her early years, but the work of Isadora Duncan had thrilled her She had gone to Paris as a medical student, and it was then that she began studying eurythmics with Jaques-Dalcroze; it was from his studio that she found her way to the world of the Ballets Russes.

Ritual remained an abiding element in Stravinsky's work. Ten years after the premiere of The Rite of Spring came the premiere of another intensely Russian ballet, with the first performance of Les Noces, given at the Théâtre Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris on 13th June 1923. However, the origins of that work go back to pre-war days. Work on the score had begun in earnest during the war, and the composition was effectively complete by 1917. However, the instrumentation for the final scoring was a problem that took Stravinsky years to solve. In 1921 he finally decided on the scoring we know today, and the work was completed at Monaco in April 1923, just over two months before the first performance; this was a notable musical occasion as three of the four pianists were contemporary French composers: Auric, Rieti, and Poulenc. Les Noces is therefore, despite its date of first performance, a work that has its roots in the same era as The Rite of Spring, and - indelibly linked with the choreography of Bronislava Nijinska – is likewise imbued with ritual.

During the 1920’s, Stravinsky rediscovered his religious faith; in 1930, his Symphony of Psalms applied a typically austere but reverent approach in his response to his chosen texts. The final movement, a setting of Psalm 150, avoids the obvious shouts of joy we often find in settings of those words in the West, as a pulsating, throbbing universe acknowledges the majesty of its creator - the "cosmological" Stravinsky in another context. Later in his life, the ritual element emerged in other works; this is more obvious in some places than others (e.g the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex of 1927, with its latin text), but is not Agon (1957) also a kind of ritual, a ritual based on dance at its most absorbing and technically adept?

These are my first thoughts after a few hours' sleep; and I haven't even had time to think about the first ballet on the programme, Balanchine's wonderful response to a composer both he and Stravinsky loved, despite the fact that they both seemed to inhabit a more anti-romantic aesthetic. Tchaikovsky's Serenade, played by Russian string players, was indeed a treat to start the evening.

It was good to be there.