{"id":2203,"date":"2022-02-24T12:31:17","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T17:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2022-02-24T12:46:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T17:46:42","slug":"the-russian-stravinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2022\/02\/the-russian-stravinsky.html","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Stravinsky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What happened to Stravinsky in the West? What to make of his \u201cneo-classicism\u201d? These are questions I\u2019ve many times pondered in this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superb Soviet-trained musicians who belatedly discovered Stravinsky\u2019s post-Russian odyssey have certainly heard his music with different ears. The most extreme case I know is that of my great friend Alexander Toradze, for whom Stravinsky is at all times \u201cRussian.\u201d You can glean the same re-understanding from the Stravinsky performances of his longtime collaborator Valery Gergiev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest evidence is the latest \u201cPostClassical\u201d webcast<\/a><\/strong>: an astounding performance of Stravinsky\u2019s Concerto for Piano and Winds with Toradze and PostClassical Ensemble<\/a><\/strong> conducted by Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez. Toradze\u2019s extensive commentary takes issue with the composer\u2019s own instructions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The many stories at hand include Lexo\u2019s onstage meeting with Ella Fitzgerald in Portland, Oregon, in 1978, as a touring Soviet artist, and his stunning recollections of Stravinsky\u2019s 1962 encounter with the legendary Soviet pianist Maria Yudina. He also shares his religious reading of the Piano Concerto\u2019s slow movement as a \u201cduality\u201d of Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox influences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angel and I join Lexo alongside our usual host, the inimitable Bill McGlaughlin.\u00a0Listen here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more Toradze — a fabulous film — click here. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LISTENING GUIDE:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5:00 \u2013 Stravinsky speaks: \u201cmusic can express nothing\u201d and cannot be \u201cinterpreted\u201d \u2013 his neo-classical credo, formulated in Paris after World War I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6:00 \u2013 A 1928 recording by Stravinsky and his son Soulima of Mozart\u2019s C minor Fugue embodies the radically impersonal aesthetic Stravinsky now embraced; I call it \u201cinsolently impersonal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8:30 \u2013 Toradze remembers Stravinsky\u2019s own performance of The Firebird<\/em> in Moscow (1962) as \u201cvery uninteresting.\u201d In his edition of Stravinsky\u2019s Piano Sonata (published after the composer\u2019s death), Soulima contradicted his father and embraced expressive \u201cinterpretation.\u201d Toradze understands Stravinsky\u2019s strictures against interpretation as a strategy for counteracting traditional piano styles rooted in Romantic repertoire (Liszt, Chopin, etc.). He recalls that, in Russia in 1962, Stravinsky testified that he always \u201cdreamt in Russian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23:00 \u2013 We sample Stravinsky\u2019s own 1968 recording of the Piano Concerto (with Philippe Entremont). Toradze finds the opening Largo too fast; he endorses the original tempo marking: \u201cLargissimo.\u201d He argues that composers are sometimes self-consciously constrained performing their own music, and cites Rachmaninoff as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

32:00 \u2013 Movement 1 of the Stravinsky Concerto, with Toradze and Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez is conducting PostClassical Ensemble (2011)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

40:00 \u2013 The influence of jazz on Stravinsky and Toradze. During Toradze\u2019s student years in Moscow, American jazz was \u201cfood for the soul\u201d; it created the illusion \u201cthat\u2019s what [American] freedom is about.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

54:00 \u2013 In 1978, on tour in Portland, Oregon, Toradze met Ella Fitzgerald and told her (onstage) that she was \u201ca goddess\u201d in the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

57:00 \u2013 In Toradze\u2019s religious reading of the second movement of the Stravinsky Concerto, a \u201cduality\u201d of Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox musical influences interact. Stravinsky, in France, believed his bleeding finger was cured by a religious miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1:05 \u2013 Movement 2 of the Stravinsky Concerto, with Toradze and Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1:20 \u2013 Movement 3 of the Stravinsky Concerto, with Toradze and Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1:25 \u2013 Toradze remembers the Russian pianist Maria Yudina, \u201ca colossal figure\u201d who long championed Stravinsky in the USSR. She first heard the Stravinsky Concerto performed by Seymour Lipkin, Leonard Bernstein, and the NY Philharmonic on tour in Moscow in 1959. She met Stravinsky in Moscow in 1962 and was dismayed to discover him susceptible to \u201cphoto opportunities and journalists.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We close by sampling Yudina\u2019s 1962 recording of the Stravinsky Concerto, conducted by Genadi Rozhdestvensky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happened to Stravinsky in the West? What to make of his \u201cneo-classicism\u201d? These are questions I\u2019ve many times pondered in this space. The superb Soviet-trained musicians who belatedly discovered Stravinsky\u2019s post-Russian odyssey have certainly heard his music with different ears. The most extreme case I know is that of my great friend Alexander Toradze, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-zx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}