Stravinsky Rite Of Spring Flac Torrent
The rediscovery of Stravinsky's Funeral Song, from a recording made in St Petersburg in Spring 2015, was a major event. Composed over the summer of 1908 in honour of his late teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, who died in June that year, it marked a moment where Stravinsky was working at many different types of writing, looking for a personal language.
The work was first performed at a memorial concert in St Petersburg in January 1909 but thereafter it disappeared without a trace: the only evidence of its existence was in accounts of the concert and the composer's own nostalgic memories of the work he saw as 'the best of my works before Firebird, and the most advanced in terms of chromatic harmonies.' And here at last is the world's first ever recording of it! A stunning little treasure in which we can still hear Rimsky, and also the Stravinsky of Firebird, but perhaps also still the Stravinsky of the Rite of Spring, which was still very recent, a testimony to the composer's breakneck evolution. It was in the same year, 1908, that Stravinsky interrupted his writing of Fireworks when he heard the news of Rismsky's death in order to compose his Funeral Song; the Scherzo Fantastique was the last score by the young composer that the old master would ever get to read, although he never heard it performed. With this recording, Riccardo Chilly offers us a judicious selection of four works from the composer's youth (we also find The Faun and the Shepherdess of 1906, a little cycle of three melodies with orchestra, sung in French, here with Sophie Koch) followed by the big turning point that is the Rite of Spring, with a reading which is both clear and fiery. © SM/Qobuz.
The Rite of Spring (two versions) Philharmonia Orchestra / Igor Markevitch Testament SBT1076 (67' ADD) Recorded 1951 (mono), 1959 (stereo). Markevitch’s 1959 stereo Rite is in a league of its own. This is a model of how to balance the score (and of how to create the illusion of a wide dynamic range within more restricted parameters). Markevitch would have been totally familiar with every note of the piece (in 1949 he sent Stravinsky a list of mistakes he had noticed in the recently revised edition), and by 1959 he clearly knew what it needed in performance, including how to keep its shock-value alive.
There are ‘improprieties’ here, such as the slowing for the ‘Evocation of the Ancestors’ (making the most of those timpani volleys), but nothing serious. As it happens, Markevitch’s ‘Introduction’ to Part 2 is unusually fast, but he’s able to take in the following small marked variations of tempo, providing valuable contrasts. And in any case, the playing is so alive, alert and reactive, whatever the dynamic levels: listen to the incisive clarinets’ entry in the ‘Mystic Circles’ and the frisson imparted to the following pianissimo tremolando from the strings.
Stravinsky Rite Of Spring Part 1
We could fill the rest of the page with similar highlights and other features unique to the performance but that would be to spoil the fun of discovery (or rediscovery – and what a transfer of the original!). This is a great Rite for many reasons, not the least of which is that the sessions were obviously electric.
As a fascinating bonus, Testament also offers a 1951 mono recording of a great Rite in the making. The differences aren’t radical, but enough to justify the idea.