Stravinsky Day, Saturday 24 April 2021

[Pulcinella]

A full day of music to mark the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky's death is planned for Saturday 10 April 2021 (announced in the April issue of BBC Music Magazine).
Building a Library will feature the Violin concerto, and in the evening there will be a broadcast of The rake's progress.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A full day of music to mark the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky's death is planned for Saturday 10 April 2021 (announced in the April issue of BBC Music Magazine).
Building a Library will feature the Violin concerto, and in the evening there will be a broadcast of The rake's progress.

A considerable advance on the normal Saturday diet. It’s not so long since Radio 3 did a Stravinsky/Tchaikovsky week.

[Bryn]

A considerable advance on the normal Saturday diet. It’s not so long since Radio 3 did a Stravinsky/Tchaikovsky week.

Though they only called it "The Tchaikovsky Experience".

[BBMmk2]

Carrying on with my season of recordings featuring Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Respighi
The Roman Trilogy
NYPO
Giuseppe Sinopoli

[Bryn]

Carrying on with my season of recordings featuring Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Respighi
The Roman Trilogy
NYPO
Giuseppe Sinopoli

Does this indicate that your attitude towards Mozart extends towards his 'rapist', Stravinsky?

[Serial_Apologist]

Though they only called it "The Tchaikovsky Experience".

Indeed - and a reminder that at the time I quickly gave up on this particular "experience", or rather disjunction of temperamental and aesthetic opposites.

[Bryn]

Indeed - and a reminder that at the time I quickly gave up on this particular "experience", or rather disjunction of temperamental and aesthetic opposites.

Hmm. You are, I take it, aware of the high esteem in which Stravinsky held Tchaikovsky's muse? You are likely to have missed out on some rather special broadcasts of works by each of them. Among such were the various versions of Stravinsky's Les Noces and the otherwise unavailable original version of Tchaikovsky's 1st Symphony (the latter conducted by Ilan Volkov).

[Serial_Apologist]

Hmm. You are, I take it, aware of the high esteem in which Stravinsky held Tchaikovsky's muse? You are likely to have missed out on some rather special broadcasts of works by each of them. Among such were the various versions of Stravinsky's Les Noces and the otherwise unavailable original version of Tchaikovsky's 1st Symphony (the latter conducted by Ilan Volkov).

Oh I do now remember hearing something of the kind, and at the time thought, well, that's rather akin to saying Stravinsky liked Tchaikovsky's handwriting.

[Pulcinella]

Oh I do now remember hearing something of the kind, and at the time thought, well, that's rather akin to saying Stravinsky liked Tchaikovsky's handwriting.

Was it a little Bluebird that told you that, I wonder?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird_Pas_de_Deux_(Stravinsky)

[jayne lee wilson]

Oh I do now remember hearing something of the kind, and at the time thought, well, that's rather akin to saying Stravinsky liked Tchaikovsky's handwriting.

So you never heard The Fairys Kiss (based on several early Tchaikovsky pieces), Scènes de Ballet or Apollo? All in wonderfully recreative homage to the tradition of Tchaikovskian Ballet, and Romantic Ballet generally.

Good note about it here.....

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/notes/67697-B.pdf

Apollon Musagète clearly relates to that very special tradition of the Tchaikovsky Serenade and the Souvenir de Florence. In Stravinsky's blood as much as anything from Rimsky, if often a little less overt.

[Serial_Apologist]

Was it a little Bluebird that told you that, I wonder?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebi...x_(Stravinsky)

Ah - the Bleeping Suity! I've never thought much of that work, though I *respect* it's composer's liking for good tunes!

[Serial_Apologist]

So you never heard The Fairys Kiss (based on several early Tchaikovsky pieces), Scènes de Ballet or Apollo? All in wonderfully recreative homage to the tradition of Tchaikovskian Ballet, and Romantic Ballet generally.

Good note about it here.....

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/notes/67697-B.pdf

Apollon Musagète clearly relates to that very special tradition of the Tchaikovsky Serenade and the Souvenir de Florence. In Stravinsky's blood as much as anything from Rimsky, if often a little less overt.

I'm not a fan of Stravinsky's Neo-Classical period; it's a matter of personal temperament; but I prefer the 1940s works, with their less referential gestural worlds, to those of the 1920s and '30s. But, unlike Tchaikovsky's, these ballet scores were not Romantic works with veins and arteries coursing with blood - the liner scribe explicates them, very well, almost as re-mixes; they are not carbuncles on the faces of well-loved friends, either.

[ardcarp]

Building a Library will feature the Violin concerto

I do hope Hilary Hahn will be in the running. It's the version I have, and I adore it.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm not a fan of Stravinsky's Neo-Classical period; it's a matter of personal temperament; but I prefer the 1940s works, with their less referential gestural worlds, to those of the 1920s and '30s. But, unlike Tchaikovsky's, these ballet scores were not Romantic works with veins and arteries coursing with blood - the liner scribe explicates them, very well, almost as re-mixes; they are not carbuncles on the faces of well-loved friends, either.

Its not so much the Tchaikovsky Ballets themselves I was thinking of; or specific references. More what happens in the actual listening: in their melodic sweetness and purity, Apollo and Fairys Kiss are often very close, shot-through, in soundworld and mood to the Tchaikovsky of say, the adagio of the Souvenir (some of it, long melodic lines for solo strings over gentle pulsing accompaniments, could almost be transplanted into Apollo) or the andante of the Serenade. And if you listen to the andante of the 3rd Symphony, you again hear that more restrained, pure and noble strain in Tchaikovsky's writing which is, I think, the Tchaikovsky Stravinsky loved most; at least as it comes though in the music itself.

Tchaikovsky frequently alternates these lovely melodies with more rhythmic passages, often with plucked or pulsing accompaniments; heard from a certain angle, it can sound quite Stravinskian...

[Serial_Apologist]

Its not so much the Tchaikovsky Ballets themselves I was thinking of; or specific references. More what happens in the actual listening: in their melodic sweetness and purity, Apollo and Fairys Kiss are often very close, shot-through, in soundworld and mood to the Tchaikovsky of say, the adagio of the Souvenir (some of it, long melodic lines for solo strings over gentle pulsing accompaniments, could almost be transplanted into Apollo) or the andante of the Serenade. And if you listen to the andante of the 3rd Symphony, you again hear that more restrained, pure and noble strain in Tchaikovsky's writing which is, I think, the Tchaikovsky Stravinsky loved most; at least as it comes though in the music itself.

Tchaikovsky frequently alternates these lovely melodies with more rhythmic passages, often with plucked or pulsing accompaniments; heard from a certain angle, it can sound quite Stravinskian...

In so many ways the C19 Russian nationalist composers re-introduced modalism to western music, partly through the folk influence, more purely delineated than in the other emergent nationalist schools of music, but especially through Orthodox liturgical music with its modal block harmonies and more generally "vertical" concept of harmonisation than that deriving from the more polyphonic western late Mediaeval and Renaissance models which Bach and other late Baroque composers adapted to diatonicism, before the next generation simplified tthis and opened up the musical fabric to narrative, sonata-type forms. There was an essay I remember reading long ago - I forget the source - comparing the "Germanic" approach to melodic construction, with its emphasis on triadic diatonic harmony directing the contours of melodies in e.g. Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven through to Wagner and Brahms (and by implication on into the 20th century), and, with comparative examples of melodic construction between Brahms and Tchaikovsky, showing the melodic construction of the former to be primarily triadic, and the Russian horizontally conceived, relatively autonomous of enharmonic movement in accompanying parts. I suppose it is this which might lend such Russian melodies their sense of purity, perhaps.