Sir Simon Rattle writes

Armchair Bard says:

Here tis. Judge for yourselves:

Recently, I came across an article which pointed out that of all the great composers, Igor Stravinsky is the least known.

That seems a bizarre thing to say about a name everyone knows, but in fact it’s the same six or eight pieces of his that are constantly played, particularly the three famous ballets – The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. But there are so many other works that are totally unknown, partly because they are really tiny, or they are scored for impractical combinations of instruments that make them hard to programme. What do you do with a set of lullabies for cats that needs three clarinets and a singer, or a set of nonsense songs that together last five minutes? There’s no obvious home for these pieces, but they deserve to be heard, because they’re so sharp and vivid and give such a flavour of the man.

So for my concerts, I wanted to create a life story, starting with some of the music Stravinsky wrote before he composed The Firebird in 1910 for the Ballets Russes, which made him an overnight sensation. There’s a beautiful set of early songs: The Faun and the Shepherdess, the brilliant Fireworks, and most extraordinary of all, the Funeral Song he wrote for the funeral of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. It had just one performance and after that the score vanished – much to Stravinsky’s regret, because he thought it was his best piece. Everyone assumed it was lost forever, but in 2015 it turned up in the basement of a library in St Petersburg. It’s fascinating, because although it’s clearly a work of genius it doesn’t really sound like Stravinsky; it actually reminds me of later Rachmaninov pieces such as the Third Symphony.

I couldn’t resist dropping in a few of the little character pieces from the two orchestral suites and the Four Etudes, such as Madrid, which is tiny but actually fiendishly difficult rhythmically. Like all his music, they’re full of memories of Russia such as the tradition of improvising nonsense poetry, and are proof that although you could take the man out of Russia – Stravinsky lived most of his life in exile, right up to his death – you couldn’t take Russia out of the man. The amazing thing is how Stravinsky could create something unforgettable in such a short time-frame – some of these pieces such as those Cat Lullabies last less than a minute. He liked to discipline himself by sticking sheets of music paper on the wall of his work room in a continuous row, starting and ending at the door. He would start composing at one end of the row, and knew he had to end when he arrived back at the door.

But there was also a deeply refined, lyrical side to him too, and to illustrate that I’ve included the beautiful Pas de deux from his ballet Apollo. It’s a reminder that Stravinsky had this way of expressing overwhelming emotion by almost not showing it. The music is hugely controlled – almost repressed – and that gives it an incredible power. You feel it especially in the religious music, where you get this extraordinary sense of something beyond this world.

Stravinsky had a fervent religious temperament – his friend Robert Craft tells us that he believed in the literal existence of the devil, with horns and a tail. And yet he conceives of God as totally outside our comprehension. We offer a taste of that side of Stravinsky in the two orchestral interludes from his final piece, the Requiem Canticles, from 1966. He asked for this extraordinary bell-ritual to be played at his funeral in Venice.

Since I took this on, the stature of Stravinsky has become even more clear to me. There are some creative personalities that are just so huge it’s very difficult to get them in proportion, and they end up standing for an entire era.

Think of visual art in the 20th century – the name everyone comes up with without thinking is Picasso. Stravinsky is on that level, and he was actually very like Picasso in the sense that he was able to keep his own personality while on the surface he was passing through an incredible variety of styles. There is also an underlying unity, which to me is like a distillation of everything it means to be a Russian, especially a Russian living through the upheavals of the 20th century. These little pieces give you all that, in a very human way. I hope it will feel something like having a conversation with the man.

18mebrumaire says:

Not entirely fair. SR is writing for the general readership of the Sunday Telegraph (God help us and them) not for his Oxbridge fart-arsed tutor. “Pabulum” is not really a Stravinskian word but it would have been right up Craft’s lexical alley.

Jim says:

Wow. You take one comment from him and treat it as if it is a summary of his entire knowledge. I expect we could sit with Rattle and talk long and wide and deep. The full article confirms my speculation about the depth. I wonder how long we could sit with Rob Keely before our toes get wet?

CRogers says:

I’ve got no axe to grind with SR, so this sounds to me like a perfectly good comment/opinion about the shorter works of IS. It would be much more useful to find a different way to express whatever is trying to get out. Otherwise it just sounds like your bitching from jealousy which might what it is?