STRAVINSKY! Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Igor Stravinsky: Fanfare
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17.9. STRAVINSKY! Helsinki Music Centre at 15.00 Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor Igor Stravinsky: Fanfare for three trumpets 1 min Igor Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments 12 min Igor Stravinsky: Agon 20 min 1. Pas de quatre 2. Double pas de quatre 3. Triple pas de quatre 4. Prelude 5. Sarabande-Step 6. Gaillarde 7. Coda 8. Interlude 9. Bransle simple 10. Bransle gay 11. Bransle double 12. Interlude 13. Pas de deux 14. Coda 15. Quatre Duos 16. Quatre Trios – Coda INTERVAL 20 min Igor Stravinsky: Rite of Spring 33 min I L’adoration de la terre (The Adoration of the Earth) II Le sacrifice (The Sacrifice) Interval at about 15.45. The concert ends at about 16.50. 1 A THIEVING Though speaking in others’ tongues, he told his own stories. CHAMELEON This concert does not proceed in chronological order. The ten-bar (!) The music of Igor Stravinsky is custom- Fanfare for Three Trumpets was origi- arily divided into roughly three stylistic nally intended for trombones and as periods: a Russian one up to the end an opening fanfare for the ballet Agon. of the First World War, a Neoclassical Stravinsky wrote it in 1953 but later de- one until the mid-1950s, and one last- leted it, and it was not performed un- ing a decade-and-a-half during which til 1981, by which time he had been he went on to apply dodecaphony slumbering in his Venetian grave for and even serialism – though not while 10 years already. The Fanfare never- Schönberg was still around to hear it. theless serves as a neat bridge to the This division is, however, very approx- Symphonies of Wind Instruments. During imate, and the Neoclassical period, in his mature period, Stravinsky wrote particular, encompassed such a variety four works bearing titles alluding to a of styles that really and truly it could symphony, but not one of them is in the simply be called just Stravinskian. old symphonic tradition. The earliest He spent the Russian period liv- is the Symphonies of Wind Instruments ing in France, and the Neoclassical in of 1920. Through it, and the ballet Switzerland and the United States, set- Pulcinella he was composing at the tling permanently in the USA in the same time, he shook himself free from 1930s. If ever there was a polyglot and his Russian period, though many of its a cosmopolitan, it was Stravinsky. melodies could be straight from The For his music, Stravinsky gathered Rite of Spring. The word ‘Symphonies’ ingredients in countless directions, does not allude here to the sympho- changing colour like a chameleon. Folk nies of Haydn, Beethoven and co., but music, Baroque, even medieval music, to the original meaning of the word: ragtime and jazz, Orthodox liturgical ‘bringing sounds together’. singing and serialism – his idiom was Dedicated to the memory of Claude a seamless blend of them all. He was, Debussy (who had died in 1918), one could say, a musical kleptomaniac, Symphonies of Wind Instruments is but as he once quipped in a legendary scored for the wind instruments nor- retort: “Good composers borrow, great mally found in a symphony orchestra. composers steal.” But did he actual- It is in one movement, and the instru- ly steal anything? He did admittedly ments mostly play in pairs or small build his ballet Pulcinella on the music groups until all come together round of numerous little-known 18th-centu- the same table in the devout, organ-like ry Italian composers, but a true thief chorale at the end. Virtually nothing re- would not lay out his loot like he did mains of the ornamental Russian peri- for all the world to see. And regardless od. The version to be performed at this of its style and period, all his musical concert is the one revised by Stravinsky material, both his own and borrowed, in 1947. always sounds like genuine Stravinsky. 2 Agon (1957) belongs to Stravinsky’s could hope for. Diaghilev took Paris by late dodecaphonic (meaning ‘12-note’) storm and Stravinsky was his victorious period and in places comes close to se- general. rial music. It was one of his many col- Expectations reached fever pitch laborations with George Balanchine the when, in spring 1913, Diaghilev adver- choreographer and is in practice totally tised a third Stravinsky ballet, The Rite devoid of any narrative plot. The word of Spring. Thirty-year-od Stravinsky was ‘agon’ is Greek and means ‘contest’ or by no means the only lionised name in ‘competition’. This abstract suite for the production: the costume designer 12 dancers is divided into short num- was Nicolas Roerich, the choreographer bers modelled directly on the danc- Vaslav Nijinsky, and taking the leading es favoured at the courts of Louis XIII role was Tamara Karsavina – all daz- and the Sun King. The music is also an zling celebrities in their day. The mu- amusing cross between simple, clear, sic was shocking, and the premiere re- Classical harmonies and 12-tone melo- sulted in a furore well documented in dies not grounded on any specific key. the history of music, opposing factions The striking feature of the sequence even coming to blows. beginning with Sarabande-Step is the Those who sought to sabotage the virtuoso solo violin. The few recurring premiere lost the battle. The dissonant melodic motifs and the return of the harmonies, the wild rhythms and, for exposition section at the end make the times, brash orchestration of The Agon viable concert repertoire even Rite may not startle the present-day lis- without the dancers. tener, but the music has lost none of its By the early 20th century, the primitive drive, and it is this that makes Romantic symphony orchestra had The Rite so highly valued; its essence reached its peak – any subsequent lies within the music itself, not its abil- modifications have mostly been slight, ity to shock. Naturally the timbres and as instrumental techniques have devel- rhythms of The Rite were imitated by oped and percussion instruments have many composers throughout the 20th been added. The reason for this is obvi- century. It can, therefore, be justifia- ous: orchestras mostly play music that bly claimed that ever since it was first had been composed by the year 1900. performed, The Rite has been the most Stravinsky’s timing was fortunate: all significant individual work in classical the big music machine needed now was music, so it was a natural choice for the a composer capable of exploiting it to inaugural concert of the Helsinki Music the full. While assembling his Russian Centre in late summer 2011. Ballet, Sergei Diaghilev had been pres- The Rite of Spring describes the cel- ent at the premiere of Stravinsky’s ebration of spring in pre-Christian Fireworks in St. Petersburg and knew at Russia. The village elders congre- once that he had found the composer gate to choose a young girl to sacri- he was looking for. He therefore carried fice to the spring. The power of the him off to Paris. The ballets The Firebird music lies not in its melodies, though (1910) and Petrushka (1911) were all he there are some memorable ones. The 3 opening, abstract-sounding bassoon also Artistic Director of the Stockholm- theme, for example, is borrowed from based Baltic Sea Festival. From 1992 Lithuanian folk music. It is the wildly to 2009 he was Music Director of the erratic rhythms, the tremendous, sud- Los Angeles Philharmonic, having pre- den changes in dynamics that make viously been Principal Conductor of the the music of The Rite so unprecedent- Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra edly abrasive. No wonder it sounded 1984–1995. nothing short of barbaric to the ears of Among the items in his extensive Stravinsky’s contemporaries. discography is a CD of his own com- The Rite of Spring is in two parts. The positions recorded by the FRSO. The first, The Adoration of the Earth, is in Sibelius-Schönberg disc he made with eight episodes played without a break. violinist Hilary Hahn and the Swedish The ritual dances of the celebration of Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2009 spring culminate in the Dance of the was awarded a Grammy. In 2012 Earth. Part II (The Sacrifice) consists Deutsche Grammophon released a disc of an introduction and five episodes, of Shostakovich’s Orango made by the again played without a break. At first, Los Angeles Philharmonic with Salonen the tone of the music becomes more conducting. mysterious. In her dance, the young Together with the Philharmonia girl chosen as the sacrifice engages Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen has in dialogue with the ancestors and fi- launched ground-breaking music pro- nally dances herself to death in the jects exploiting digital technology, such Sacrificial Dance that brings the work as RE-RITE and Universe of Sound in- to a frantic end. stallations. In these projects, the audi- ence itself conducts the orchestra or Abridged programme notes by plays in it by means of audio and vid- Osmo Tapio Räihälä translated eo projections. Salonen has also devel- (abridged) by Susan Sinisalo oped an Orchestra app for iPad giving the user a thorough insight into the way a symphony orchestra works. ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Esa-Pekka Salonen has been award- ed many prestigious distinctions in Described by The Boston Globe as dis- the course of his career. He won the playing “a kind of complete musician- UNESCO Rostrum Prize for his compo- ship rarely encountered today,” Esa- sition Floof in 1992, and was the first Pekka Salonen is one of the world’s conductor to receive the Accademia most celebrated conductors.