Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks was commissioned for a Green Park London performance in 1749 celebrating the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. The music was the most successful element of the evening, because the accompanying fireworks sparked a major fire which burned down one of the royal pavilions! Powell's How to Train your Dragon is exciting and emotionally powerful music from the film Dreamworks. This lively Ritual Fire Dance movement from the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s ballet El amor brujo (Bewitched Love) originally gained popularity through the composer's own piano arrangement. It is fast and repetitive, building in intensity in a dance where jump through and leap around a fire in worship of the fire god. Composed in 1875, Tchaikovsky's massive opening chords and the soaring and emotionally charged melodies make his Piano Concerto No 1 one of the most popular of nineteenth century concertos. Stravinsky's Firebird Suite is drawn from his ballet The Firebird, based on a Russian folk tale, which was written in 1910 for the Paris season of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. It was an immediate success with its sparkling instrumentation, beautiful melodies, dramatic energy and distinctive harmonies.

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