Song of a Reformed Headhunter

An 11 AM concert on Saturday was a great idea. Rested the night before, I was alert and attentive throughout the All-Stravinsky program I heard with SB. In the first half, Valery Gergiev conducted the New York Philharmonic in Symphony in Three Movements (1942-45) and Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923-24; rev. 1950). I liked the Concerto more than the symphony. The orchestration was lean but still sounded lush. Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and basses. Alexei Volodin was marvelously quick on the keyboard. After the intermission, what the audience came for, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1911-13). I remembered Helen Gardner playing it to her class at Oxford while explaining the clashing juxtapositions in "The Waste Land." The abstract, Cubist ceiling of the concert hall seemed to me a perfect accompaniment to the music: rigorous, scientific,...

Heard with TH last Thursday three Stravinsky works for the first time. Svadebka (Les Noces or The Wedding) (1914-23) was traumatic. The bride pleaded over and over again with her mother not to tear her hair in order to plait it. Scene Four: The Wedding Feast was anything but joyous. The work was sang by four soloists and the Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre. The musical instruments were pitched and unpitched percussion and four pianos, mostly played as percussion. Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920, rev. 1945-47) was brief--12 minutes--but colorful. Stravinsky used "symphonies" to signal the original Greek meaning of "soundings together." The work is dedicated to Debussy, whom Stravinsky met in 1910, when Debussy congratulated him enthusiastically on the premiere of The Firebird. L'Oiseau de feu, or The Firebird, is based on a Russian folk tale. Originally a ballet score, it was written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The tale in brief: Prince Ivan free...