Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky: Three Early LPs

Igor Stravinsky made quite a number of LPs conducting his own music, almost all for the US Columbia label. In the early years of this blog, I posted three albums of the composer leading his compositions released on other labels:

• The ballet Jeu de cartes (Card Game), recorded for Telefunken with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1938

• Mass, recorded for RCA Victor in 1949

• Another ballet, Apollon musagète, and the Concerto in D, also recorded for RCA Victor, in 1950

These recordings are all newly remastered in ambient stereo. Details and links are below.

Igor Stravinsky

Jeu de cartes

Jeu de cartes was premiered by with George Balanchine with the old American Ballet in 1937, and first recorded by its composer the next year for Telefunken. As I wrote years ago, "Jeu de cartes, a ballet score, was among Stravinsky's neoclassical works. Neither the Berlin orchestra nor the resonant acoustic are what we associate with this style, but the musicians put the unfamiliar music across with aplomb."

Critical reaction to the ballet has been mixed. The New York Times' Anna Kisselgoff has written that the piece is not often attempted because "the score, which, although specifically written for Balanchine, is virtually undanceable."

Todd Bolender in Jeu de cartes, New York City Ballet 1951

On the other hand (sorry!), C.J. Luten of the American Record Guide stated, "Though it does not represent one of the high points of the Russian-born master’s career, the work nevertheless contains many of Stravinsky's typically magical flights of imagination. Much of this magic is apparent in the consecutive and cumulative surprises that hold the listener’s attention from point to point."

Luten was reviewing the Capitol LP transfer of the Telefunken originals.

LINK

Mass

Years ago I wrote, "Stravinsky's avowed purpose in this Mass was to provide music that avoids operatic gestures and speaks to the spirit. The performance, however, is a bit anonymous and stylistically typical of its time. The recording is indifferent."

In fairness, it is difficult music for a chorus of men and boys, and according to C.J. Luten, the recorded performance is much better than the live premiere.

Arthur Berger of The Saturday Review: "For those who meet halfway a work that maintains more than the usual reserve, a fascination lies in following the labyrinth of dissonances through to their resolutions in extraordinarily clear, cool harmonious chords (as in the instrumental opening of the Agnus Dei).

"It is more than an intellectual joy - the feeling, rather, of being liberated after wandering in' an underground passage that seems to offer no exit." (Others may prefer simply not to enter the labyrinth.)

There is no denying Stravinsky's sincerity, however. As Berger noted, "His modest, deeply religious work, essentially a profession of faith, is content merely to serve the church as the early Flemish masters did."

LINK

Apollon musagète, Concerto in D

First, a few words about the titles of these works. Apollon musagète is the ballet usually titled simply Apollo. The work that is called the "Concerto Grosso in D" is actually not a concerto grosso; it is more aptly called the Concerto in D.

In these 1950 recordings, Stravinsky conducts the "RCA Victor Orchestra," a group of New York orchestral players. The soloists in the ballet are violinists John Corigliano and Michael Rosenker, then the concertmaster and vice concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic.

Serge Lifar (Apollo) and Alexandra Danilova (Terpsichore)

These are excellent performances of top-drawer Stravinsky. Here's Arthur Berger's take in Saturday Review: "The pure beauty of Apollon is conveyed in long flowing lines by strings whose special quality derives from divided cellos and from basses used independently. Emphasis of the low strings gives grandeur and breadth. 

"The string orchestra normally disposed yields very different sounds, on the reverse side of this LP, in the Concerto in D. Its stunning luminous qualities ... suggest Danses concertantes - the playfully truncated phrases, for example. The Arioso shows how much a musical genius can still do above an old-fashioned accompaniment."

LINK