Under the inspired baton of its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra will bring the month of January to a close and open the month of February with performances of one of the most controversial and revered scores ever composed. When it was first premiered in Paris in 1913 as a ballet, Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” caused an actual, physical riot in the theater.

Despite that contentious beginning, “The Rite of Spring” is arguably the greatest orchestral score composed since its premiere and one of the most influential scores ever imagined.

“The Rite of Spring” was the third of three commissions offered Stravinsky by Sergei Diaghilev, the mighty impresario of the Ballets Russes. Stravinsky had only recently left the motherland to take up residence in Paris, the home of daring artists of all disciplines.

Stravinsky first was offered “The Firebird” by Diaghilev in 1910. It was a heady combination of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (one of Stravinsky’s own teachers) and Maurice Ravel, dazzling in sound and hypnotic in rhythms. The following year, Stravinsky composed “Petrushka,” a much more daring work, particularly harmonically and orchestrally. The world of contemporary classical music had been put on notice.

All the same, nothing prepared anyone for “The Rite of Spring.” Its musical language seemed to create new norms from one measure to the next. It almost seemed as though Stravinsky was doing away with everything that had gone before and established a completely new language for classical music.

All three works were choreographed and danced by Vaslav Nijinsky, perhaps the greatest male ballet dancer of all time. Although his career was marred by a series of scandals in the early 20th century, his legacy of brilliance has never been approached, let alone eclipsed.

Nézet-Séguin has prefaced “The Rite” with Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Both performances will be heard at the Kimmel Center’s Marian Anderson Hall: Saturday, Jan. 31, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 1, at 2 p.m.

Epiphany ‘Lessons and Carols’

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill marked the ancient Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 18 with “Lessons and Carols.” It was among the most beautifully structured and movingly performed liturgies I’ve ever experienced anywhere in any church in my 76-plus years of life. The selection of musical numbers chosen by the parish’s music director, Andrew Kotylo, and the level at which they were performed by Kotylo, organ scholar Andy Brown, and the parish’s Choristers and Schola, was superb from start to finish.

Epiphany — the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Three Magi who came from the East to worship the Christ child — is one of Christianity’s most touching and moving celebrations. It comes amid the darkness of winter, offering the light of a star seen in the East by the Three Wise Men, who follow it to Jerusalem, where they ask King Herod where the Christ Child has been born.

Epiphany is a longed-for promise to a world lost in darkness, diligently searching for the light of that promise of the long-awaited Messiah.

Kotylo’s choice of music to enhance the nine readings taken from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible did just that — it brought these ancient texts to life in our own world, deepened by the magic that only great music promises to deliver.

And deliver it did Sunday afternoon. The choirs sang with beauty and passion, with the church’s magnificent pipe organ offering support and embellishment.

Chamber Orchestra

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia continued its season with an all-Mozart program performed Jan. 16, 17 and 18. I caught the last on Sunday afternoon in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square, and came away grateful that the ensemble’s programs were no longer being heard in the drier acoustics of the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater but, rather, in the sumptuously warm embrace of Holy Trinity’s enveloping resonance.

Violinist Francisco Fullana was both soloist and conductor. He led and soloed in the Violin Concerti Nos. 3 in G major and 5 in A major, and was joined by violist Mary SangHyun Yong for the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major.

His work as a soloist was unparalleled for its beauty of tone, elegance of phrasing and shimmering brilliance. As a conductor, he inspired his fellow musicians to perform some of the best playing I’ve heard from them in many a season.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.