BaL 3.11.18 - Stravinsky: Mass

[Pulcinella]

Actually I don't think I've heard any of those! But I got to know the piece through the Bernstein version, and I always found it intensely moving, I remember writing a letter* to a former schoolfriend during my student days and saying something like listening to it was my last remaining link to belief, or some such youthful hyperbole. It still has a not completely dissimilar effect.

* a sort of primitive email, written by hand on one or more pieces of paper, folded and placed in an "envelope" and taken to a "post office", where it would receive a "stamp" and eventually conveyed physically to the dwelling place of the addressee.

In my pre-email student days at Oxford, when I heard Christ Church perform Stravinsky's Mass liturgically, there was an inter-college (and possibly departmental) pigeon post system that didn't even require a stamp. It was pretty efficient, from what I remember.

[jayne lee wilson]

Slightly OT - or perhaps merely tangential, a brief mention of two outstanding recent Stravinsky releases, which I haven't found time to post on yet: a warm, lively and muscular Jeu de Cartes from Mariinsky/Gergiev; and Agon from the OP de Luxembourg/Gimeno - one of the best I've heard of a work I'm very fond of. I found the Gimeno Agon livelier and more colourful than the Gielen, for example, though there are still very few recordings of it anyway. It's part of a set with Le Sacre, Jeu de Cartes, Funeral Ode and Concerto in D, beautifully recorded by Pentatone, who seem very fruitfully busy this year!

Do seek them out, any which way you can!

As for the Mass, Igor's later version; or RIAS/Musikfabrik/Reuss (excellent sound) have kept me happy for some time...not heard it for ages, must correct...)

[Bryn]

Slightly OT - or perhaps merely tangential, a brief mention of two outstanding recent Stravinsky releases, which I haven't found time to post on yet: a warm, lively and muscular Jeu de Cartes from Mariinsky/Gergiev; and Agon from the OP de Luxembourg/Gimeno - one of the best I've heard of a work I'm very fond of. I found the Gimeno Agon livelier and more colourful than the Gielen, for example, though there are still very few recordings of it anyway. It's part of a set with Le Sacre, Jeu de Cartes, Funeral Ode and Concerto in D, beautifully recorded by Pentatone, who seem very fruitfully busy this year!

Do seek them out, any which way you can!

As for the Mass, Igor's later version; or RIAS/Musikfabrik/Reuss (excellent sound) have kept me happy for some time...not heard it for ages, must correct...)

That Gergiev Jeu de Cartes was yesterday's Record Review Disc of the Week, so there is no excuse for not checking it out via the iPlayer.