You just know it has
to be a winner: Stravinsky conducted
by Craft, the London Symphony and Philharmonia
orchestras at Abbey Road, and almost
80 minutes worth on the bargain Naxos
label. Assiduous collectors may like
to note that these recordings were previously
released on Koch International Classics.
Craft is currently recording the complete
works of Webern and Schoenberg for Naxos.
His Stravinsky recordings are not only
enriched by intelligent and sensitive
musicianship, but are also informed
by a special working relationship with
Stravinsky which lasted for over twenty
years.
The two works here
are both ballet scores, and both have
associations with past composers. Here
the similarities end, with Stravinsky
arranging most of the material for Pulcinella
from a variety of sources, and using
Tchaikovsky as the springboard for the
almost entirely originally composed
Fairy’s Kiss.
The orchestral suite
of Pulcinella is more often performed
than the complete work presented here,
which is subtitled ‘Ballet in One Act
With Song.’ Many of the pieces used
in the work were originally attributed
to Pergolesi, but in fact as many movements
come from a Venetian composer working
in the 1730s called Domenico Gallo.
The libretto is the work of Léonide
Massine, who also choreographed the
ballet. With the romantic and dramatic
synopsis sketched out in the booklet,
the excellent notes by Robert Craft
go on to explain how, despite the musical
numbers lacking correspondence with
the dramatic situations, and the vocal
numbers being unrelated to the stage
action, the ballet still somehow turns
itself into ‘an opera with a cohesive
dramatic entity’. True, Stravinsky’s
keenly detailed orchestration has strong
powers of unification, but for me it
doesn’t amount to anything like an opera
– something for which many might be
more than grateful.
Tempi are tight from
the outset, and the orchestra is of
course superbly recorded. The 1st violins
are possibly a little over spot-lit
and glassy sounding, which makes for
interesting listening in some of the
tougher sections: track 5 Allegro
assai and the famous Tarantella
for instance. Craft takes no prisoners
while executing his exciting tempi,
which makes for an exhilarating listening
experience. His timings are unsurprisingly
almost identical to Stravinsky’s own
in his 1968 Columbia recording of the
Suite, which I have to say does sound
the better rehearsed of the two. My
only other slight reservation is with
some of the singing. None of it is bad
and most of it is excellent, but I find
the tenor Robin Leggate’s opening solo
Mentre l’erbetta a little soggy
and effortful. He warms up later however,
and acts as an excellent foil to Diana
Montague in the momentary Ncè
sta quaccuna po’ and is the very
model of a modern major general in Una
te fa la ‘nzemprece. The famous
Se tu m’ami is beautifully taken
by Montague, with Craft maintaining
realistically brisk tempi, refusing
to turn Parisotti’s popular song into
grand opera.
‘The Fairy’s Kiss’
concerns an infant, separated from his
mother and brought up by country folk,
who is dogged by the attentions of a
Fairy, guiding his fate so that they
remain together for eternity. Craft
has it that the young man is the personification
of Tchaikovsky, with the Fairy as his
Mephistophelian muse. With Tchaikovsky
as his muse, the harder edge of Stravinsky’s
idiom is greatly softened, and the score
is filled with tender, almost sentimental
moments, richly orchestrated and flowing
into what Craft calls a ‘continuous
dance symphony’. The marriage of these
two musical giants is of course one
made in some other-worldly place where
the spirit of the one can collaborate
with the pen of the other as if the
veil of time were dissolved and irrelevant.
It is indeed fascinating to hear Tchaikovsky
through the ears of Stravinsky, whose
extended development and manipulation
of his predecessor’s idiom is Beethoven-like
in its scale.
This CD attracts another
unhesitating recommendation and collectors
should add it to the Stravinsky/Craft
section on their shelves. This is turning
into an excellent set whose recordings
have that modern technical advantage
over those in the elderly Sony ‘Complete’
edition, and which yield little if anything
in terms of performance.
Dominy Clements
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