Stravinsky and more, 2015

Stravinsky and more, 2015

June 15, 2015.  Stravinsky and more.  Several composers were born this week: Edvard Grieg, Norway’s national composer (he was born on June 15th of 1843), the Frenchman Charles Gounod (born on June 17th of 1818), Jacques Offenbach, who was born just a year later, on June 20th of 1819 in Cologne to a Jewish cantor but lived most of his life in Paris and received a Légion d’Honneur from the hands of the Emperor Napoleon III; and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, the ninth of Johann Sebastian Bach’s children (he was born on June 21st of 1732).   To mark these birthdays, we’ll play: Solveig’s song, from Grieg’s original incidental music to Peer Gynt with the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko (here); Gounod’s lovely Serenade, exquisitely performed by Joan Sutherland (with her husband, Richard Bonynge, on the piano, here); a comic aria Les oiseaux dans la charmille from Offenbach’s only opera, The Tales of Hoffmann with another Australian soprano, Emma Matthews (here); and the only non-vocal entry, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach’s Piano Concerto E Major, with Cyprien Katsaris and Orchestre de Chambre du Festival d`Echternach (here).

Igor StravinskyBut the most significant composer of them all was, without a doubt, the great Igor Stravinsky.  Stravinksy was born on June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, outside of Saint Petersburg.  During his long life Stravinsky moved from one country to another (after leaving Russia he lived in France, Switzerland and the US); he also didn’t stay still compositionally, often discarding one style, however successful it was for him, and adopting a new musical paradigm.  It is hard to imagine that the same composer who wrote The Rite of Spring, with its wild colors and brutal rhythms, would just 15 years later create a ballet as abstract and serene as Apollon musagète, or, for that matter, some years later, another ballet, Agnon, written in the twelve-tone system.  Probably the only other person who could reinvent himself as often and with the same immense success was Pablo Picasso.  Stravinsky naturally possessed a tremendous technique, which allowed him to imitate or directly quote other composers while maintaining the artistic integrity and originality of the composition.  He used this skill with uncanny virtuosity when he wrote the ballet Le Baiser de la Fée (The Fairy's Kiss), an homage to his favorite composer, Tchaikovsky.  The ballet was commissioned in 1927 by the famous Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein; Stravinsky completed the ballet in 1928, on the 35th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death (it was premiered in November of that year).  The libretto was based on Hans Christian Andersen's story The Ice Maiden.  Bronislava Nijinska (Vaclav’s sister) was the choreographer.  Stravinsky used several of Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces and songs, and recognizably Tchaikovskian sonorities throughout the ballet.  A tremendously inventive piece, it marked another step in the development of Stravinsky’s compositional style.  In 1934 he wrote a suite based on the music of the ballet; this suite, which Stravinsky called Divertimento, is usually performed in concerts.  We’ll hear it in the performance by the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mark Kadin conducting.