The Rite of Spring at 100

[Petrushka]

Unless you've been living on another planet you can't have missed that this Wednesday, May 29 is the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

I'll be playing Stravinsky's own recording on the day but the first time I ever heard the piece was Solti's recording with the Chicago SO in 1975.
Needless to say, it blew my socks off and the piece still does.

Anybody got any special memories of what this work means to them or of memorable performances? When was the first time you heard it? And which recording will Forum members be playing on Wednesday night?

[slarty]

I commemorated the event by listening again to my favourite performance - a live recording of the concert with the LSO and Pierre Monteux which was performed on the 50th anniversary in london.
what a performance. I was always surprised that this recording never made it onto the BBC Legends series.
slarty

[Alison]

I will probably wait until the Festival Hall relay on Thursday.

Philharmonia/Salonen only matched by LSO/Boulez in recent memory.

Studio recordings just don't do it for me in the Rite.

I want to hear the Colin Davis Amsterdam account sometime.

[EdgeleyRob]

Not even LSO/Abbado Alison ?

[jean]

A fine performance by the RLPO with Petrenko last Friday.

[antongould]

The recent Rattle / Berlin Phil is IMHO excellent.

[jayne lee wilson]

Technically, you can still play The Rite of Spring in 2013... But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

[rauschwerk]

I bought the Stravinsky recording around 1962. Then I heard the LSO conducted by Colin Davis at the 1963 Proms (thrilling) and realised that the composer's version was irredeemably tame. Within a few years I heard also Dorati and Boulez live.

On Wednesday you can hear a piano duo team from these parts (well, one is Russian and the other was born in Birmingham) do it at the Friends' Meeting House in Brighton.

[french frank]

On Wednesday you can hear a piano duo team from these parts (well, one is Russian and the other was born in Birmingham) do it at the Friends' Meeting House in Brighton.

In 2009 I heard that at a Cadogan Hall Proms recital played by Simon Crawford-Phillips and Ashley Wass (preceded by Simon Trpčeski playing Chopin and Mendelssohn). What a recital that was! And if you've ever seen two exhausted pianists after a performance ...

[HighlandDougie]

But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

I think that I know what Jayne means but I also think that the answer can be, "yes". I went to hear Gergiev conduct it last year with the LSO and - somewhat pretentiously, I freely admit - decided that I would try to listen to it as if it were the first time. While it's not possible to eradicate completely the music from one's memory/consciousness, it succeeded in that it brought home powerfully just how radical it is as a piece of music. It certainly rekindled my enthusiasm for a work with which I had become jaded. Now I have the Sony 10 CD box and, worse, the Decca 20 CD box to work through ....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

Yes ... and No. (It's the same with the Eroica [or the Brahms Second or the Brandenburgs or ... or ... or ...]: so much a part of the standard concert repertoire that it is in danger of disappearing into the cultural background - simultaneously Icon and Chameleon. But then, along comes a Krivine, and the work receives its First Performance again.

[ahinton]

I've never been wholly convinced that the work is quite as ground-breaking as it is commonly thought to be, given that it was composed after most of Debussy's work, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloë, Strauss's Salome and Elektra, Schönberg's Funf Orchesterstücke, Mahler's Ninth and Tenth symphonies, Skryabin's Prometheus and the composer's own l'Oiseau de Feu, but that fact no more undermines my recognition of it as one of the most important works of its day than it does my appreciation of its constant core repertoire position ever since it première; Carter (who, I believe, attended its US première, is by no means the only composer to have declared that listening to it for the first time inspired him to be a composer himself.

[Serial_Apologist]

Technically, you can still play The Rite of Spring in 2013... But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

Once one has the work "inside one's head" in its entirety, my answer would be a resounding yes. As with any complex piece of music, once memorised, one finds more and more inside one's head that one had not noticed before.



[Ed: I have moved some posts here so as not to disrupt discussion about the Rite of Spring by people who appreciate the music. On reflection, I would prefer not to have approved a post which simply wished to reiterate, yet again, how much a particular poster hated it. ff]

[french frank]

Technically, you can still play The Rite of Spring in 2013... But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

I agree with others that the answer is Yes. And the two piano version lost nothing of Le Sacre's visceral savagery present in an orchestral version.

Sorry, I can't remember which version I had, but the earliest one was on an EP which I chose as a free gift when I bought my first (rather cheap) record player.

[Sir Velo]

Technically, you can still play The Rite of Spring in 2013... But is it possible to HEAR Le Sacre du Printemps any more...?

Yes. Take out a CD, press play, make sure your fingers aren't stuck in your ears and it should be possible.