Stravinsky: Études (4) for orchestra

Pierre Boulez’s name has always been closely linked with the three great early Russian ballets of Stravinsky – The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Here are all three, in outstanding performances with the premier orchestras of Chicago and Cleveland.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gets a head start on the March 2009 celebration of Pierre Boulez’s 85th birthday with a true rarity: a recording of Igor Stravinsky’s complete ballet Pulcinella. Showcasing a stripped-down CSO and three endearing young vocal soloists, Boulez’s clean aesthetic brings this neo-Classical masterpiece to life. Also included are Stravinsky’s brash Symphony in Three Movements and jaunty Four Études, which demonstrate the orchestra’s astonishing variety of colours. Boulez is currently the CSO’s Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus, having held the Principal Guest Conductor title since 1995. His concerts in Chicago have featured numerous performances of 20th-century masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as collaborations with several notable soloists. The tightly knit scores on this album are united by the intense focus of Boulez and the CSO, and stand as documents of his fruitful years in Chicago.

“The French maestro [’s] impeccably clean conducting and wholesale influence over the CSO always leave us craving more.” Chicago Sun-Times

"The three soloists were excellent and game: mezzo-soprano Roxana Constantinescu, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen. The agile orchestra was able to capture all of the composer's engrossing colors (a duet for soprano and tenor nods to Scheherazade), and the singers got high marks for diction, especially tenor Phan in the rapid-moving "Una te fa la 'nzemprece" (There are those who feign innocence)." Musicweb

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gets a head start on the March 2009 celebration of Pierre Boulez’s 85th birthday with a true rarity: a recording of Igor Stravinsky’s complete ballet Pulcinella. Showcasing a stripped-down CSO and three endearing young vocal soloists, Boulez’s clean aesthetic brings this neo-Classical masterpiece to life. Also included are Stravinsky’s brash Symphony in Three Movements and jaunty Four Études, which demonstrate the orchestra’s astonishing variety of colours. Boulez is currently the CSO’s Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus, having held the Principal Guest Conductor title since 1995. His concerts in Chicago have featured numerous performances of 20th-century masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as collaborations with several notable soloists. The tightly knit scores on this album are united by the intense focus of Boulez and the CSO, and stand as documents of his fruitful years in Chicago.

“The French maestro [’s] impeccably clean conducting and wholesale influence over the CSO always leave us craving more.” Chicago Sun-Times

"The three soloists were excellent and game: mezzo-soprano Roxana Constantinescu, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen. The agile orchestra was able to capture all of the composer's engrossing colors (a duet for soprano and tenor nods to Scheherazade), and the singers got high marks for diction, especially tenor Phan in the rapid-moving "Una te fa la 'nzemprece" (There are those who feign innocence)." Musicweb

On the face of it one would have thought that there was little in common between Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), two interesting facts prove otherwise.

Britten, born in Lowestoft in Suffolk on 22nd November (St. Cecilia’s Day), had already and studied with Frank Bridge by the time he went to Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk, in September 1928. The Master in charge of music on meeting him remarked “Oh, you’re the boy who likes Stravinsky!” Today that remark might be considered a compliment, at that time Stravinsky was reviled as THAT composer who had perpetrated the outrage called “The Rite of Spring” fifteen years earlier.

The funeral service for Stravinsky, who died on 6th April 1971 in New York, was held as he had requested in Venice nine days later and he was laid to rest near his friend and ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev, on the Island of San Michele. Britten, too, had a great love for Venice as can be heard in his last opera based on Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”.

Both composers are also high on Sir Simon Rattle’s list of favourite composers. In 2003 he and his Berlin Philharmonic gave workshops and a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to the city’s disadvantaged children and as a past Artistic Director of Britten’s beloved Aldeburgh Festival he has conducted many of his works including a number of those that had been found after the death of the composer.

The box of Stravinsky contains works from all parts of his musical life including six ballets; three major ones from his youth – The Firebird, showing the inspired palette for exotic colour learnt from his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, Petrushka (in its revised version of 1947) and The Rite of Spring; two in his Neo-Classical style – Apollo and Pulcinella and extracts from Agon which shows the influence of his studies of serial technique as expounded by Anton Webern. There are also a number of his works that were inspired by jazz.

The box of Britten contains besides the three great song cycles (Les Illuminations, Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings and Nocturne) the “War Requiem”, “Sinfonia da Requiem”, the ever popular “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” and the most remarkable set of songs written in French when he was 15, “Quatre Chansons Françaises”.

The three great Stravinsky ballets plus major works such as the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, ‘Dumbarton Oaks’, Apollon musagète, and Le Chant du Rossignol in performances under the baton of Charles Dutoit, recognised as one of the greatest interpreters of this repertoire. These 4 CDs provide a superb introduction to one of the greatest 20th-century composers in critically acclaimed recordings.

Recordings made in the 1980s and 1990s in the acoustically renowned Montreal Church of St Eustache.

New booklet notes addressing Stravinsky’s career and special aptitude for the ballet.

‘The first big advantage of this new Dutoit version of the complete Firebird is that it provides substantial and very apt couplings, over an hour’s music in all, ravishingly played and superbly recorded.’ Gramophone review of Firebird, Scherzo fantastique, Feu d’artifice, October 1986

‘So far as recording quality is concerned, this new release is quite outstanding … The playing of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra is first-rate in every department … The strings are rich in sonority, the wind-playing flawless, and phrasing throughout is sensitive. Take almost any section of the record and play it to a visiting friend and it will excite unqualified admiration both for orchestral playing and recording.’ Gramophone reviewing Le Sacre du Printemps in April 1985