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Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Greeting Prelude (1955)
Symphony in C (1938-1940)
Divertimento (1934, revised 1949)
Circus Polka (1942-1944)
Symphony in Three Movements (1942-1945)
BBC Philharmonic/Sir Andrew Davis
rec. 2019/2020, MediaCityUK, Salford, Manchester, UK
Reviewed in surround sound
CHANDOS CHSA5315 SACD [83]

Right at the outset, the Greeting Prelude invites us in with a wallop: in-your-face drum rolls and braying horns launch a 55-second wittily modernist version of Happy Birthday. Even Pierre Monteux, for whose 80th birthday it was written, might have guffawed. It makes a lively opening to a splendid disc of life-affirming music.

Stravinsky wrote the first two movements of the Symphony in C in France and Switzerland in the late 1930s. The last two, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for its fiftieth anniversary, were written in America in 1940. Analysts have claimed the work is neither a symphony nor in C. The composer later said that “it may be too episodic […] and certainly there are too many ostinati”. But that need not worry most of us. The neo-classical Stravinsky would not be the great artist we know without episodes (which nonetheless link through their own logic, often intervallic) and ostinati (his preferred mode of musical motion), even in a symphony.

Andrew Davis makes a virtue of both these elements. He characterises the episodes well while keeping their family kinship, and generates steady momentum through the ostinati without letting them become a mere jog-trot. Of course the composer helps with the occasional bar or two in a different metre, adding cross-accents, and so on. The conductor’s alertness, and the orchestra’s responsiveness, pay dividends in terms of creating a sense of a symphonic journey. That journey has a quintessentially Stravinskian apotheosis. Its glowing coda, a wind and brass chorale, one of his many elegiac litanies, is beautifully sounded by the BBC Philharmonic. The very last bar though is just for muted divided strings, pesante sub. p . Someone observed that after the chaste wind chorale, it is if one had been embracing a statue, which at the warm string entry, becomes flesh. Davis has not quite captured that, but after the composer’s recording, few conductors have.

Davis’s tempi are close enough to those of Stravinsky’s own recordings of both symphonies, which themselves did not vary much between his mono originals and his stereo remakes. The main difference is that Davis adds a minute to the fairly short second movement of the Symphony in C (Stravinsky took 5:52 in 1952 and 5:43 in 1962, while Davis takes 6:44). This makes a bit more room for the players to relish their intricate interplay, especially among the winds and between winds and strings. But it does not add sentiment, which would be fatal to the essentially cool emotional temperature of the neo-classical Stravinsky.

The Symphony in Three Movements might seem an exception in that regard, given Stravinsky most unusually referred to external events which affected this composition. Wartime newsreel footage lies behind some parts he claimed, while an aborted movie score ended up in the slow movement. But the composer added, more characteristically: “in spite of what I have said the symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. That is all.”

Davis still puts plenty of drama in his performance. He takes more time than the composer over the first movement (Stravinsky 9:51 in 1946 and 9:28 in 1961, Davis 10:07), and the finale (Stravinsky 5:56 then 5:57, Davis 6:46). I still prefer Stravinsky’s fiery 1961 disc, but I feel Davis’s tempo added weight, while still maintaining impetus. (And of course some of the timings might not be entirely Stravinsky’s, since some takes conducted in rehearsal by Robert Craft could have ended up on the issued disc!) In the Andante, as elsewhere, there is a tactile sense of timbre and colour caught by the precise recording of, for instance, the harp and prominent solo piano part (expertly played by Ian Buckle). The finale has plenty of thrills, right up to the headlong coda, with its Hollywood ending – a “rather too commercial D flat sixth chord”, quipped the composer.

The Divertimento is a symphonic suite taken from Le baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss). The ballet was a homage to Tchaikovsky, and based his selected songs and piano pieces. The 45-minute score is so true to Tchaikovsky that it has few of those aforementioned trademark ostinati of the younger composer. It was reduced to a 25-minute suite in four movements. It is as satisfying as the full score, if not more so. It is relished by Davis and his players, who show as much feeling for this dance music as for the symphonies. The horns enjoy their moment in the sun in the Swiss Dance of the second movement, and in the closing pas-de-deux the solo cello plays with warmth and affection.

The Circus Polka was commissioned by George Balanchine, who had been asked by a circus to create a dance for elephants. The dance was, it is said, performed by fifty elephants and fifty female dancers. That was in a scoring for circus band and organ. The version heard here is the composer’s own orchestral version, one of several short potboiler pieces of the war period when, cut off from European royalties, he needed quick money. Commentators have wished he had worked on more substantial pieces, but little by Stravinsky is entirely without interest. Here he produces one of those moments that should make anyone smile when they hear it for the first, or fiftieth, time: the seemingly inevitable arrival of Schubert’s Marche militaire No. 1 (at 3:01). Raucously scored, it is almost acclaimed by Davis and his players.

There is Paul Griffiths’s good booklet note in English, French and German, and truly excellent surround sound. Stravinsky’s own stereo recordings of his two symphonies, re-issued at various times, remain indispensable (review). But this is an outstanding modern issue of those, and of some very enjoyable extras.
 
Roy Westbrook

Published: November 17, 2022



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