557499 bk Strav 25/10/2004 11:14am Page 32 STRAVINSKY Oedipus Rex Les Noces Edward Fox • Soloists • Simon Joly Chorale Tristan Fry Percussion Ensemble • Philharmonia Orchestra Robert Craft (from the Robert Craft Photographic Collection) 8.557499 32 557499 bk Strav 25/10/2004 11:14am Page 2 Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) na perinushke u ‘zgolov’itsa,u ‘zgolov’itsa odiyalitsa, the blankets warm, Oedipus Rex • Les Noces pod ‘dialitsom dobrïy molodets,dobrïy molodets See our Fétis there, Pamfilievitch. Khvetisushka, The little sparrow first makes his nest, then takes Stravinsky conducted the first performance of Oedipus those super-sophisticated mid-’20s? It seems he Khvetis Pamfil’evich. his mate to be with him. Rex (1925-1927) in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, was.’ [Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1973] Vorobey vorobku paruet posadivshi na karavat’, Fétis holds Nastasia and kisses her, his bride, on 30th May, 1927, in a double bill with Firebird, in Khvetisushka Nastas’yushka tseluit’, Kisses her and holds in his hand her little hand. which George Balanchine danced the rôle of Kastchei. Bernstein might also have mentioned the debt to yon tseluit-miluit, na ruchku kladyot, Holds her hand and presses it upon his heart, Composers—Ravel, Poulenc, and Roger Sessions Verdi in Jocasta’s aria and her duet with Oedipus. A na ruchku kladyo, kï serdechku zhmyo: Holds her hand and lays it upon his heart. among them—were the first to recognize it as photograph of Verdi occupied a prominent position on “Akh tï dushka, zhyonushka, Dear heart, little wife, my own dearest treasure, Stravinsky’s most powerful dramatic work and one of the wall of Stravinsky’s Paris studio in the 1920s, and dannaya moya poglyaden’ya, nochnaya moya zabava, My sweet, my honey. his greatest creations. After hearing Ernest Ansermet on his concert tours he would go out of his way to hear pazhivyom mï s toboy kharashenichka, Dearest flow’r and treasure of mine, fairest flow’r conduct it in London, February 12, 1936, the young Verdi operas, to the extent of changing the dates of his chtobï, Iyudi nam zavidïvali. sweetest wife, Benjamin Britten noted in his diary: own concerts, as he did in Hanover in December 1931 Let us live in happiness so that all men may envy us. for a performance of Macbeth. In the early 1930s he ‘One of the peaks of Stravinsky’s output, this work wrote to one of his biographers: “If I had been in (Zanaves opuskaetsya medlenno v prodolzhenie vsey (The curtain falls slowly.) shows his wonderful sense of style and power of Nietzsche’s place, I would have said Verdi instead of posleduyushchey muzïki) drawing inspiration from every age of music, and Bizet and held up The Masked Ball against Wagner”. In leaving the whole a perfect shape, satisfying every Buenos Aires, in 1936, Stravinsky shocked a journalist aesthetic demand … the established idea of by saying: “Never in my life would I be capable of originality dies so hard.’ composing anything to equal the delicious waltz in La Traviata”. Leonard Bernstein may have been the first to Other influences besides Verdi’s are apparent. The ©Copyright for all countries 1922, 1990 Chester Music Limited. identify the principal influence on the music: “Gloria” chorus at the end of Act One, the Messenger’s Transliteration (by Philip Taylor) and English translation © Copyright for all countries Chester Music Limited. music, and the a cappella choral music in the All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission. ‘I remembered where those four opening notes Messenger scene are distinctly Russian, but the genius of Oedipus come from… And the whole of the piece is in the unity that Stravinsky achieves with metaphor of pity and power became clear; the his seemingly disparate materials. pitiful Thebans supplicating before their Les Noces (Svadebka) ranks high in the by no powerful king, imploring deliverance from the means crowded company of indisputable twentieth- plague … an Ethiopian slave girl at the feet of century masterpieces. That it does not immediately her mistress, Princess of Egypt … Amneris has come to mind as such may be attributable to cultural and just wormed out of Aida her dread secret … linguistic barriers, and to the ineptitude, partly from the Verdi, who was so unfashionable at the time same causes, of most performances, for the piece can Oedipus was written, someone for musical only be sung in Russian, both because the sounds of the intellectuals of the mid-’20s to sneer at; and words are part of the music, and because their rhythms Aida, of all things, that cheap, low, sentimental are inseparable from the musical design. A translation melodrama. [At the climax of Oedipus’ that satisfied the quantitative and accentual formulas of “Invidia” aria] the orchestra plays a the original could retain no approximation of its literal diminished-seventh chord … that favorite sense. For this reason Stravinsky, never rigidly averse to ambiguous tool [i.e., tool for suggesting sacrificing the clarity of sense for sound’s sake, ambiguity] of surprise and despair in every abandoned an English version on which he had laboured romantic opera … Aida! … Was Stravinsky in the fall of 1959 and again in December 1965. It is having a secret romance with Verdi’s music in also the reason, bizarre as it may seem, that his own first 8.557499 2 31 8.557499 557499 bk Strav 25/10/2004 11:14am Page 30 recording of Noces was made in English (1934). No apart from the much slighter Renard, that combines Ostal’nïye druzhki i zhenshchinï The Men, the Friends and the Women Russian chorus was available in Paris at the time, but in music with a text in his mother tongue, the only work in Ryumochku vïpivay! Molodïkh odaryay! Toast the happy married couple, for our married ones any case he abominated the French version by C. F. which ritual, symbol, meaning on every level are part of Nashikh molodykh odaryay, need many things, Ramuz, which requires numerous changes and his direct cultural heredity. nashim molodïm mnogo nado, They want to have a little house, increasing their home, adjustments in the musical rhythms. It is also the one Stravinsky work that underwent oni khotyat domishkom zhit’, domishka pribavit’, A bath will they build for themselves there. Performances are infrequent as well as inadequate. extensive metamorphoses. Svadebka occupied his na uglu banyu postavit’.Tï zaydyosh’ da poparish’sya, You come and have a bath, afterwards you will be heated. The four pianos and seventeen percussion instruments imagination throughout a decade and, in aggregate, took a posley tovo pokhvalish’sya: vot kak stali nashi So did our married pair begin their happy days together. that comprise the ensemble are not included in the more of his time than any other work of the same molodïye-to zhit’! Now then! Now then! standard instrumentation of symphony orchestras. Then, length. The sketches, in consequence, offer a unique Gor’ko! Okh, nel’zya pit’! Drink to their health, drink and toast our pair. too, the piece by itself is long enough for only a short study of his processes of growth and refinement. The half-programme, while the few possible companion reasons for the long gestation are, first, that Stravinsky (Zhenikh i nevesta tseluyutsya) (The bride and bridegroom embrace each other.) works, using many of the same instruments—Varèse’s several times suspended work to compose other music, Ionisation, Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and which, in each case, left his creative mind with altered Khor Chorus Percussion, Antheil’s Ballet mécanique (an arrant perspectives. Second, he was creating something so Nu-zhe, nu-zhe, nu ryumochku vïpivay, Drink again, toast the pair, and embrace the two. plagiarism)—derive from it too obviously as new, both musically, in its heterophonic vocal- a nashikh molodïkh daryay! This one, this one, this one, this is good, this one even instrumental example. instrumental style, and in theatrical combination and Eta, eta, eta, khot’ kuda, eta i taper’ stoit rublya, now costs a rouble, As a result of the obstacles of language and culture, genre, an amalgam of ballet and dramatic cantata, that a kak, yey, yey boka nadut’, za etaku i dva, dva dadut. But if you squeeze it in your hand, squeeze it tightly, audiences do not share in the full meaning of the work, he was himself unable to describe it. “Russian Khot’ byï tak, khot’ bï tak, khot’ bï rublikov khot’ by pyat,. it costs double that. hearing it as a piece of “pure” music; which, of course, Choreographic Scenes,” his subtitle on the final score, A kogda budet tvoya chest’, khot’ bï rublikov, khot’ I don’t care, I don’t care at all though it costs as much. and as Stravinsky would say, is its ultimate meaning. neglects to mention that the subject is a village wedding bï shest’. Now the river Volga overflows, But Stravinsky notwithstanding, Svadebka is a dramatic and that the four scenes depict the ritual braiding of the Volga-reka razlivaetsya, zyatik i vorot ubivaetsya: And before the gate I hear one calling, work, composed for the stage, and informed with more Bride’s tresses, the ritual curling of the Groom’s locks, “Akh tyoshsha moya, tyoshsha laskovaya!” Oh mother dear, my mother dear who calls me. meanings on the way to that ultimate one than any other the departure of the Bride for the church, and the Ay, vï druzhki slepï All you silly maidens tell me who the maiden was opus by the composer. The drama is his own, moreover, wedding feast. chto devka detinke boka protolkala… who ruled her true love.