Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps & The Firebird Suite

Also available as a hybrid Super Audio CD

Stravinsky has been compared to his near contemporary Picasso, the painter who provided d�cor for Pulcinella and who through a long career was to show mastery of a number of contrasting styles. Stravinsky's earlier music was essentially Russian in inspiration, followed by a style of composition derived largely from the eighteenth century, interspersed with musical excursions in other directions. His so-called neo-classicism coincided with the beginning of a career that was now international. The initial enthusiasm for the Russian revolution of 1917 that had led even Dyagilev to replace crown and scepter in The Firebird with a red flag, was soon succeeded by distaste for the new r�gime and the decision not to return to Russia. Stravinsky wrote his Danses concertantes in Hollywood in 1941 and early 1942, in response to a commission from the Wemer Janssens Orchestra, which gave the first performance in Los Angeles on 8th February under the direction of the composer. Although originally intended for concert use, the Danses concertantes were planned in balletic sequence, with an introductory and concluding march to bring the dancers on and off the stage and the necessary variety, not only in the Pas d' action and Pas de deux but also in the theme and variations, three of the latter based on an ascending semitone step. In 1944 the dances were choreographed by Balanchine for the Ballet russe of Monte Carlo. The style of writing reflects that of the earlier ballet Jeu de cartes.

Includes work(s) for piano by Igor Stravinsky, ranging from modernist takes on "light" dance genres such as ragtime, polka, and tango to the youthful late Romanticism of the Sonata in F-sharp. Soloist: Victor Sangiorgio, an in-demand soloist and one of Australia's leading luminaries of the piano.

REVIEW:

Victor Sangiorgio is an Italian-born pianist who grew up in the Australian city of Perth...He has since lived and worked at various times in the U.S. and England: there, in 1991, he set down this program of Stravinsky’s solo piano music. The disc originally appeared on the Collins Classics label in 1993, and I have been enjoying it ever since. It is probably the best overview of this repertoire you can find at the moment, certainly at Naxos’s low price.

Sangiorgio plays with a freedom that belies the unpianistic complexities of some of these pieces, notably the tricky cross rhythms in the second of the Four Etudes of 1908. Although Stravinsky himself was a pianist, and wrote the majority of these works for himself to play, he obviously had a personal and quirky keyboard technique.

Most of Stravinsky’s solo piano output dates from early in his career. The F♯-Minor Sonata of 1903–04 is a student work, written or at least completed under the guidance of the composer’s mentor Rimsky-Korsakov (at the latter’s summer residence in Lzy). It is a fully fledged, late-Romantic, four-movement work, echoing Tchaikovsky and formally harkening back to Beethoven. The young Stravinsky was manifestly uncomfortable with the heroics demanded by the first and last movements; it shows us a glimpse of his later self only in the middle movements: the Scherzo and Andante. The former is cheeky, while the latter hints at the Russian melancholy that comes to the fore in The Firebird and often colors parts of the master’s later works. Sangiorgio doesn’t belabor the piece...but makes the best of it through clarity and lightness.

Those attributes pay dividends in the two most substantial works on the disc: the Sonata of 1924 and the Serenade of 1925. These opuses, written around the same time as the Concerto for Piano and Winds and the Capriccio, show Stravinsky bringing to Classical period structures his own astringent harmonies and unevenly stressed rhythms. Stravinsky’s music from this era can sound dry, but Sangiorgio finds a playfulness; a tongue-in-cheek quality that somehow expresses the composer’s sly enjoyment of his own handiwork.

...as an overall recommendation this Naxos reissue is the [recording of this repertoire] to go for. Sound is appropriately clean, close, and warm.

-- MusicWeb International

This lively and lovable disc of Stravinsky's neoclassical and small ensemble pieces stands with the best available. The two Suites for Small Orchestra never have been better done, the opening Andante taken a bit more slowly than usual so as to wring every drop of sweet nostalgia from the music, while the concluding Galop offers brilliance and high spirits galore. The same observations apply to the Soldier's Tale Suite, with superb contributions from trumpet, double bass, violin, and percussion making for a winning performance, energized by Paavo Järvi's clean rhythms and vigorous tempos. The players bring a toe-tapping spring to the Three Danses, while the devil's music has apt ferocity and an entirely appropriate, cartoonish intensity.


Ragtime also goes about as well as any version around, while the two concertos sound much less dry than usual, a combination of open, airy textures and warm sonics. Speaking of which, in multi-channel format there are some strong reflections from the rear speakers in loud sections, but otherwise we hear natural instrumental placement and good front to back depth. Stereo, of course, eliminates the rear channels, but in this case it sounds a bit flat, comparatively speaking. Certainly the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is a world-class chamber orchestra, and it does itself proud here. If you like "little" Stravinsky, you'll enjoy this release very much.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Robert Craft leads a thrilling performance of Oedipus Rex--incisive, swift, and as mercilessly inevitable as fate itself. From the opening bars, where those spine-chilling runs in the trumpet penetrate the orchestral tutti like screams of horror, you can tell that Craft has every detail of this work (his second recording) well in hand, and so for that matter does the Philharmonia. Anyone who believes that Craft is a dull conductor should listen to this urgent account--from the great choruses (first announcing Jocasta's entrance, with particularly clear timpani and piano ostinatos, and later her death), to the Verdian energy he brings to the Oedipus/Jocasta duet in Act 2. It would have been even better if Craft had followed Stravinsky's lead in his own early-1960s recording: repeat the "Gloria" chorus with the opening Act 2 narration in the middle. It's not a major point, and strictly speaking it's not what's in the score; but it's such marvelous music, and hearing it twice simply doubles the pleasure.


As for the singers, they do well--for the most part. After some initial unsteadiness Martyn Hill settles down to close Act 1 most affectingly, and his singing in Act 2 is very good. Jennifer Lane's Jocasta sounds younger than, say, Jessye Norman's, and her lighter touch gets around the notes better than many a bigger, heavier voice. As Creon, David Wilson-Johnson offers disappointingly approximate pitch in his big Act 1 aria, but he does much better in the slower-moving proclamations of the Messenger. The smaller roles come off without any problems, and the Simon Joly Male Chorus sings more confidently than it did in Craft's Symphony of Psalms. Speaker Edward Fox sounds like a bored Oxford don, but at least he admirably refrains from the annoying histrionics that some bring to the part (particularly in its French-language version). And Craft naturally makes sure that as Stravinsky wanted, Fox pronounces the protagonist's name "Eedipus" as opposed to the chorus' "Oydipus".


Craft's Les Noces--he would with good reason prefer the Russian title "Svadebka"--is simply spectacular. Not only does it feature both superb playing by the four pianos and percussion and marvelous singing by soprano Alison Wells and Martyn Hill, but it's clear that Craft has invested a great deal of care and attention in getting clear articulation of the Russian text. This is critical because, as Craft explains in his notes, the music flows naturally from the speech-rhythms of the words. So many performances of this marvelous piece sound like garbled chanting in an unrecognizable tongue. Craft ensures that for once we really hear the Russian, and just as significantly he balances his forces perfectly so that singers and instrumentalists play off each other with an astonishing degree of rhythmic tension. The resulting explosion of color and energy (you can hear this at any point, but the transition from the third to the fourth scene offers an excellent example) has few if any equals in other performances--including Craft's earlier one on Music Masters. Ideally clear and focused sound completes this very desirable package, given new life thanks to Naxos (these performances previously appeared, differently coupled, on Koch). [2/5/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The relationship between Igor Stravinsky and the violin didn't get off to a promising start: early on in his career the composer stated that he was not fond of stringed instruments, finding them ‘rich in cheap expressivity’. He was also suspicious of virtuoso interpreters – among which violinists were particularly numerous – and their tendency to 'seek immediate triumphs and to lend themselves to the wishes of the public'. Nevertheless there are in Stravinsky's oeuvre a number of works featuring a solo violin, all of which have now been recorded by his compatriot Ilya Gringolts. The focus of the preceding volume was on the works for violin and piano, most of them Stravinsky's arrangements of his own music for the stage, and Gringolts and pianist Peter Laul were praised for their performances, for instance in Fanfare: 'The Russian duo has discovered – and created – new freshness in the sound of Stravinsky's music for the instrument. Urgently recommended.' On the present release, Gringolts combines duos – again in the company of Laul – with other genres, including Stravinsky's most famous work for the violin: his Violin Concerto from 1931. In the concerto, as in the extract for solo violin and strings from the ballet Apollon musagète, Gringolts is supported by Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk.

Stravinsky composed his music at the keyboard, often struggling to play his own complex rhythms. It is not surprising therefore that many of his symphonic works also exist in his own piano versions, such as the four hand transcription of his ballet, The Rite of Spring. It is a pianistic tour de force, the players often having to interweave fingers, hands and arms to meet the composers tremendous demands of virtuosity. The work has for many years formed part of the standard repertoire of Benjamin Frith and Peter Hill. They have played it throughout England to astonished audiences, and have broadcast this (and the other two works on this disc) on BBC Radio 3. The performance is staggeringly brilliant, superbly recorded in St Silas Church, London on a wonderful Bosendorfer Imperial Grand. The duo are now recording exclusively for Naxos, Peter Hill will be recording the complete music by Stravinsky for two hands at sessions this summer.

Includes work(s) for pno by Igor Stravinsky. Soloist: Martin Jones.

Classical Music

Before the First World War, especially for the famous ballet ensemble "Les Ballets Russes", one of the most important dance companies of the 20th century, and its impresario Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky composed the first three of his great ballet music works for large orchestra, indeed, the most important of his ballets in general: "L'oiseau de feu" (The Firebird) in 1910, "Petrushka" in 1911, and "Le sacre du printemps" (The Rite of Spring) in 1913. The first of these ranks as a pioneering work of the early 20th century – and the third, regarded as a key work of 20th-century music due to its extraordinary rhythmic and tonal structures, can both be experienced on this new release from BR-KLASSIK - in live recordings with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its chief conductor Mariss Jansons, and in masterly interpretations. Diaghilev, a formative figure in 20th-century ballet, had founded the Ballets Russes ensemble in 1909 in Paris, where it first performed before moving to Monte Carlo in 1911. The first performance of Stravinsky's "Firebird" took place on June 25, 1910 at the Paris Opera House, and "Le sacre du printemps" premiered on May 29, 1913 in the newly-built Théâtre des Champs-Élysées - a day that went down in history as one of the great artistic scandals of the 20th century. The furious protests from the Parisian public combined with the highly negative critical reviews all ended up making Stravinsky famous. His truly futuristic music has now established itself internationally and is an integral part of concert programs, and one can still hear why it so enraged audiences over 100 years ago. (“The Firebird" can be heard in Stravinsky’s ballet version of 1945.)

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

DSD remastered SACD from quadraphonic recording tapes.

Michael Tilson Thomas's recordings were made in l972 in Boston's Symphony Hall. His Rite was highly praised when originally issued and remains one of the great performances of this masterpiece. The recording always was praised for its sonic quality but now, in this first release of the multi-channel original, we can enjoy it in stunning audio. The engineers did a spectacular job of capturing the sound of a huge orchestra performing in an acoustically-perfect hall. The orchestra is spread out in front of you, instrument placement is precise, and rear speakers are utilized most effectively to create the sound of a live performance......This is one of the finest SACDs I've ever heard. Thank you Pentatone!! - Classical CD, September, 2015.

I have no criticism whatsoever about the excellence of these performances. No one plays neo-classical and late Stravinsky as well as Robert Craft, and whether in his energetic and witty account of Jeu de cartes, or the nicely "sec" articulation he uses to characterize the Danses and Scènes, these performances are as fine as any available, and they are very well recorded. Mark Wait also is a fine piano soloist in the Capriccio, giving a swift and uncommonly high-spirited rendition. The Variations belongs among Stravinsky's most uncompromisingly arid compositions. Craft delivers the piece with his usual clarity and focus, but like some Webern, the fact that you can listen to this brief work multiple times to try to "get it" doesn't mean that you will want to or that it's time well spent. Indeed my only qualm about this disc, one that prevents my giving it the highest rating, is that if you enjoy neo-classical Stravinsky you likely won't want the Variations. Still, it's only a bit more than five minutes of music and you can always ignore it. If the coupling suits, then don't hesitate.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Stravinsky in Hollywood, a film by Michael Capalbo, tells the story of an "old school" European artist knocking heads with the brash New World. The documentary uses a combination of existing archival footage (some never before seen), interviews with Stravinsky and his assistant Robert Craft, and premieres several big studio film scenes of the 40s with music Stravinsky wrote for them.