![Igor Stravinsky - Le roi des étoiles [With score] @DamonJHK](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fbP89tlo_FI/maxresdefault.jpg)
Uploaded February 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 -- 6 April 1971)
Orchestra: [Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin] Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Choir: Berlin Radio Choir [Rundfunkchor Berlin]
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
[Cantata] Le roi des étoiles [The king of the stars] for Orchestra and male chorus, written in 1911-12
The Russian title of Stravinsky's cantata King of the Stars (1911-1912) is Zvezdoliki, literally "Starface." The work is scored for male chorus and full orchestra (including celesta and two harps). The text, by symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, is in Russian; Stravinsky, as was often the case, was more interested in the text on a purely sonic level than for its content or semantic sense. "Its words are good," Stravinsky noted, "and words were what I needed, not meanings."
King of the Stars was composed at roughly the same time that Stravinsky worked on the score of his ballet masterpiece The Rite of Spring (1911-1913). The choral writing, predominantly in four parts, is characterized by close spacing and triad-based harmonies with the addition of sevenths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths. At times, Stravinsky sets phrases in unison to accentuate certain parts of the text.
As with many of Stravinsky's early "Russian" works, King of the Stars has a fundamentally bitonal harmonic structure, often employing the choral and instrumental bodies as distinct harmonic entities superimposed upon one another; the final sonority, for example, consists of two distinct chords, a C major dominant ninth chord in the orchestra and a G major seventh chord in the chorus. Debussy, to whom the work is dedicated, was among the many who deemed the work essentially unperformable, targeting its bitonality as a likely cause of serious intonation problems in performance. The work was first performed in 1939, more than a quarter century after its composition.
[allmusic.com]
Original Audio: youtube.com/watch?v=6v3b2KiBw7k
Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 -- 6 April 1971)
Orchestra: [Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin] Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Choir: Berlin Radio Choir [Rundfunkchor Berlin]
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
[Cantata] Le roi des étoiles [The king of the stars] for Orchestra and male chorus, written in 1911-12
The Russian title of Stravinsky's cantata King of the Stars (1911-1912) is Zvezdoliki, literally "Starface." The work is scored for male chorus and full orchestra (including celesta and two harps). The text, by symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, is in Russian; Stravinsky, as was often the case, was more interested in the text on a purely sonic level than for its content or semantic sense. "Its words are good," Stravinsky noted, "and words were what I needed, not meanings."
King of the Stars was composed at roughly the same time that Stravinsky worked on the score of his ballet masterpiece The Rite of Spring (1911-1913). The choral writing, predominantly in four parts, is characterized by close spacing and triad-based harmonies with the addition of sevenths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths. At times, Stravinsky sets phrases in unison to accentuate certain parts of the text.
As with many of Stravinsky's early "Russian" works, King of the Stars has a fundamentally bitonal harmonic structure, often employing the choral and instrumental bodies as distinct harmonic entities superimposed upon one another; the final sonority, for example, consists of two distinct chords, a C major dominant ninth chord in the orchestra and a G major seventh chord in the chorus. Debussy, to whom the work is dedicated, was among the many who deemed the work essentially unperformable, targeting its bitonality as a likely cause of serious intonation problems in performance. The work was first performed in 1939, more than a quarter century after its composition.
[allmusic.com]
Original Audio: youtube.com/watch?v=6v3b2KiBw7k
![Igor Stravinsky - Le roi des étoiles [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fbP89tlo_FI/mqdefault.jpg "Igor Stravinsky - Le roi des étoiles [With score]
Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 6 April 1971)
Orchestra: [Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin] Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Choir: Berlin Radio Choir [Rundfunkchor Berlin]
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
[Cantata] Le roi des étoiles [The king of the stars] for Orchestra and male chorus, written in 1911-12
The Russian title of Stravinskys cantata King of the Stars (1911-1912) is Zvezdoliki, literally Starface. The work is scored for male chorus and full orchestra (including celesta and two harps). The text, by symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, is in Russian; Stravinsky, as was often the case, was more interested in the text on a purely sonic level than for its content or semantic sense. Its words are good, Stravinsky noted, and words were what I needed, not meanings.
King of the Stars was composed at roughly the same time that Stravinsky worked on the score of his ballet masterpiece The Rite of Spring (1911-1913). The choral writing, predominantly in four parts, is characterized by close spacing and triad-based harmonies with the addition of sevenths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths. At times, Stravinsky sets phrases in unison to accentuate certain parts of the text.
As with many of Stravinskys early Russian works, King of the Stars has a fundamentally bitonal harmonic structure, often employing the choral and instrumental bodies as distinct harmonic entities superimposed upon one another; the final sonority, for example, consists of two distinct chords, a C major dominant ninth chord in the orchestra and a G major seventh chord in the chorus. Debussy, to whom the work is dedicated, was among the many who deemed the work essentially unperformable, targeting its bitonality as a likely cause of serious intonation problems in performance. The work was first performed in 1939, more than a quarter century after its composition.
[allmusic.com]
Original Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v3b2KiBw7k")
![Edvard Grieg - Romancer og Ballader {Romances and Ballads}, op. 9 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gnDIdKq5dSc/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Romancer og Ballader {Romances and Ballads}, op. 9 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers (Song 1): Monica Groop (voice), Ilmo Ranta (Piano)
-Performers (Songs 2, 3, 4): Knut Skram (voice), Rudolf Jansen (Piano)
Romancer og Ballader {Romances and Ballads} for Voice and Piano, op. 9, written in 1863-66
00:03 - I. Harpen {The harp}
03:25 - II. Vuggesang {Cradle song}
07:37 - III. Solnedgang {Sunset}
10:46 - IV. Udfarten {Departure}")
![Edvard Grieg - Scenes of country life, op. 19 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMo2W-lzOtU/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Scenes of country life, op. 19 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performer: Gerhard Oppitz
Folkelivsbilleder {Scenes of country life} for Piano, op. 19, written in 1869-71
00:00 - I. Fjeldslåt (In the mountains)
05:32 - II. Brudefølget drar forbi (The bridal procession passes by)
09:19 - III. Fra Karnevalet (From the Carnival)
His very famous Piano Concerto in A minor aside, Edvard Grieg was known during his lifetime and is today remembered more or less exclusively for his proficiency at the musical miniature. Even the celebrated and very worthy Peer Gynt incidental music is, when you get right down to it, a collection of miniatures/ Grieg certainly composed longer, more substantial works, but it was his piano bonbons that really engraved his name in the public consciousness. The ten volumes of Lyric Pieces for piano and the four Album Leaves of Op. 28 in these works are pieces that every young pianist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether of serious ambition or of the variety that played the instrument only because it was expected of a young lad or lady of manners and class, had in their fingers. Reigning as the most popular of all Grieg piano miniatures is the second of the three Pictures from Life in the Country, Op. 19, of 1870 and 1871. The collections title is variously translated as Pictures from Peasant Life, Pictures from Everyday Life, and so on; Griegs original title is Folkelivsbilleder, and he described them as humoresques.
The first of the Op. 19 Pictures is called In the Mountains or Mountain Tune; No. 2 is the Bridal Procession (reused by Grieg in the Peer Gynt music); and the third piece is From the Carnival or Carnival Scene. In the Mountains opens with a quietly rumbling A minor melody in octaves that gradually grows in strength as a full harmonic accompaniment builds around it; a second melody, flitting gracefully atop a twitch-like neighbor-note idea in an inner voice, takes over in A major. The opening rumble starts again to round out a basic three-part form. The Bridal Procession music is merry rather than solemn, with a twinkling, ornamented melody that bounces along from start to finish. While they still must be considered musical individuals, the three pieces of Op. 19 are actually somewhat connected to one another, topically and musically; for as the third reaches its culmination, Grieg quotes snippets from the first and second as if the happy carnival-goers are recalling or perhaps witnessing the mountain and wedding scenes.
[allmusic.com]")
![Albert Roussel - Trio for Flute, Viola and Cello, op. 40 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hNaWj-xSh6k/mqdefault.jpg "Albert Roussel - Trio for Flute, Viola and Cello, op. 40 [With score]
-Composer: Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (5 April 1869 – 23 August 1937)
-Performers: Paul Verhey (flute), Henk Guittart (viola), Herre-Jan Stegenga (cello)
Trio pour flûte, alto et violoncelle, op. 40, written in 1929
00:00 - I. Allegro grazioso
04:46 - II. Andante
10:04 - III. Allegro non troppo
Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge that intrepid patroness whose generosity called forth works from the most distinctive composers of her era (e.g., Stravinsky, Bartók, Dallapiccola, Pizzetti, Prokofiev, et al.) Roussels Trio for Flute, Violin, and Cello was composed in a mere 15 days in September 1929. Given the prominence of the flute, it bears a similar relation to the Sérénade for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Harp (1925) that his Third Symphony (1929-1930) bears to the Fourth (1934); in both pairs Roussels final manner enables him to return to a mood or vision whose exuberance has been pared, chastened, and, perhaps, wizened. For so fastidious a composer it would not do to repeat himself, and there is a palpable gain in refinement and concentration in both the Fourth Symphony and the Flute Trio, rippled by an airy grace and leaping vitality that look back to the earlier works, but with an autumnal cast and, in the Flute Trio, a mellowed sweetness eschewing their coruscations and sophisticated primitivism. Classical is the term applied by most commentators to this shrinkage, and it is, indeed, a classic case, so to speak, in which for the connoisseur, at least less is more, though one may prefer the striking audacities of the earlier works. Still, there is no denying the Trios concise elegance. Of the first movement, Allegro grazioso, Norman Demuth noted, The writing is a model of terseness in its contrapuntal moments and is an excellent model. The resources of each instrument are fully exploited and the flute is taken as a perfectly serious entity in the ensemble. The flute is, indeed, primus inter pares, though in the second movement Andante, after a long-breathed melody neither grave nor gay but prolix and eldritch it allows the viola and cello to come into their own in a slowly coiling utterance that can seem mere note-spinning in a slack performance, but given with requisite tautness looks with chaste eyes into a demesne purged of passion. In the chirpy third movement Allegro non troppo, the flute regains its prominence in a motoric, cheerfully mocking, spritely utterance whose scintillance seems almost too polite, or, as Demuth said, There is not the thought in this movement which is characteristic of the other two.... Dedicated to Mrs. Coolidge, the Trios premiere was given by Georges Barrère, flute; Lionel Tertis, viola; and Hans Kindler, cello, on October 30, 1929, in Paris at a Concert Coolidge chez Institute international de cooperation intellectual.
description: [allmusic.com]")
![Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 22, K. 589 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hW6YZ_AZX80/mqdefault.jpg "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 22, K. 589 [With score]
-Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)
-Performers: Alban Berg Quartet
String Quartet No. 22 in B-flat major, K. 589, written in 1790 [Prussian Quartet II]
00:00 – I. Allegro
06:20 – II. Larghetto
12:29 – III. Menuetto. Moderato
18:46 – IV. Allegro assai
Mozarts greatest contribution to the string quartet repertoire dates from 1782 and 1785, the period during which he composed the six quartets dedicated to his friend Joseph Haydn. Only four quartets follow them, the lone K. 499 in D major, composed in 1786 and known as the Hoffmeister quartet, and the three quartets known as the Prussian quartets. They owe their name and genesis to what has generally assumed to have been a commission for six quartets from King Frederick William II of Prussia. The king, a keen amateur cellist, had received Mozart at Potsdam during the visit of the latter in the spring of 1789. After Mozart returned to Vienna he quickly completed the first of the quartets, K. 575 in D, but thereafter made no further attempt to add to Frederick Williams quartets for another year. Mozarts dilatory attitude to proceeding with the set may be in part accounted for by the commission he and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte received for Così fan tutte, which probably arrived late in the summer of 1789. However, it also casts doubts on the so-called commission from the Prussian king, particularly since he referred in a letter to dedicating the quartets to the king, a very different matter to a commission, for which he would have received an agreed sum. There is in fact no evidence that Frederick William ever set eyes on the three quartets which were completed, and they were eventually published posthumously by Artaria in January 1792, just weeks after the composers death.
The B flat Quartet, the second to be completed, was entered in Mozarts own thematic catalog in May 1790. Mozart had obviously returned to the quartets after the first performances of Così in January 1790, since the third, K. 590 in B flat followed a month later. With the notable exception of the great String Quintet in D, K. 593, the two quartets represent the only major works composed by Mozart during the whole of 1790, a year in which increasing financial worries resulted in the bleakest compositional year of his adult life. In the three completed quartets, Mozart concentrated on giving the cello-playing king a dominant role, often pushing the second violin and viola into the background to enable the cello to present thematic material or engage in dialogue with the first violin. The second quartet is in the customary four movements, an opening Allegro, followed by a relatively brief Larghetto, a Minuet of almost symphonic proportions and a finale marked Allegro assai. While the quartet (like its companions) fails to attain the elevated status of the six Haydn quartets, it is nevertheless a work of enigmatic beauty typical of Mozarts late works.
[allmusic.com]")
![György Ligeti - Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hl6zjQT_P_Y/mqdefault.jpg "György Ligeti - Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano [With score]
-Composer: György Sándor Ligeti (28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006)
-Performers: Marie-Luise Neunecker (horn), Saschko Gawriloff (violin), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (Hommage à Brahms), written in 1982
0:00 - I. Andante con tenerezza
6:17 - II. Vivacissimo molto ritmico
11:46 - III. Alla marcia
15:02 - IV. Lamento. Adagio
Ligetis Trio for violin, horn, and piano was completed in 1982 and premiered on August 7 of that year. Apart from some smaller works, including Hungarian Rock (chaconne) and Passacaglia ungherese for harpsichord, Ligeti had composed very little since completing Le Grand Macabre in 1977. The extreme eclecticism and physical scope of the opera seem to have cast the composer into a compositional crisis: what does one write when one has just finished writing everything? As many composers before him had done, Ligeti turned to music history and other musical cultures for an answer. Though Ligeti had never been averse to history, his more explicit turn in that direction is reflected in the chaconne and passacaglia forms in the 1978 harpsichord pieces and in the final scene of Le Grand Macabre, which itself is a passacaglia. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Ligeti gained inspiration from many sources, but most particularly from study of sub-Saharan African drumming and from research into fractal procedures in mathematics. In 1980 Ligeti also discovered the music of American expatriate composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997), whose multi-layered, complex studies for player piano closely paralleled Ligetis rhythmic interests at the time.
Ligeti also became interested in the music of Chopin and Schumann, particularly in their use of rubato and hemiola (a subverting of the predominant rhythmic pattern with a different division of the beat). The idea of a melodic line carrying its own distinct rhythmic burden became one of the main concerns of the Trio for violin, horn, and piano. Ligeti had another, even more specific influence in the horn trio of Brahms Op. 40 (1865). Ligetis musical language, having emerged from the vex of a writers block, is paradoxically purified and direct in its presentation of ambiguous rhythmic cross-relations and skewed harmonic clichés, such as several versions of the common horn fifths motif. In the first movement the violin and horn engage in a duet of two tempos, but the relationship between the two is relatively exact. The horn is the main melodic instrument, soaring in high, fast runs. In spite of the apparent complexity of the melodic language, the harmonic profile of the movement, and of the piece as a whole, is surprisingly diatonic. After the circumspect first movement, the motoric but dancing rhythms of the second and third movements show the results of Ligetis knowledge of the musics of Africa and the Caribbean, and of Nancarrow. The second movement is in an eighth note pulse that is further subdivided into groups of three plus two plus three. Ligeti manipulates the groupings of this pattern to produce seemingly different tempos among the three instruments, a technique he took even further in the Six Piano Études of the following year. The third movement begins with a stuttering rhythmic unison that gradually goes out of phase. A lyrical, legato section succeeds this material with differing phrase lengths among the instruments. The final movement is a lament based loosely on the sorrowful, descending funeral chants of several Eastern European cultures. Again, the varying phrase lengths are an important expressive aspect of the music.
The Trio for violin, horn, and piano led directly to the Études for piano, Book I of 1985 and to the Piano Concerto of 1985-1988. Portions of all three works share virtually the same concerns, and reuse very specific gestures and modes of expression, just as Ligeti reused those ticking clocks and harmonic clouds throughout his earlier music.
[allmusic.com]")
![Dmitri Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No. 1 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/i6rU9AYzCws/mqdefault.jpg "Dmitri Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No. 1 [With score]
Composer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 9 August 1975)
Orchestra: Philadelphia Orchestra
Conductor: Eugene Ormandy
Cello: Mstislav Rostropovich [Also the dedicatee]
Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107, written in 1959
00:04 - I. Allegretto
06:36 - II. Moderato
17:14 - III. Cadenza
22:47 - IV. Allegro con moto
Shostakovich composed this music in July 1959 and Mstislav Rostropovich introduced it at Leningrad on October 4, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting. It is lightly scored for double winds, piccolo, contrabassoon, a single horn (no other brass), timpani, celesta, and strings.
Although a prolific composer in other forms, Shostakovich wrote only six concertos. If those for keyboard seem prevailingly saucy and sun dappled, the four string concertos are somberly serious. Where theres any laughter at all, it sounds forced and hollow. To lighten it (or try) only reinforces the holy fool (yurodivy) analogy that haunts Solomon Volkovs Testimony, the posthumously alleged Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich.
When the First Cello Concerto was written with almost Mozartean speed, Stalin had been dead six years but not forgotten. In 1958 Boris Pasternak was forced to decline a Nobel Prize for his anti-Stalinist novel, Doctor Zhivago, and then was expelled from the Writers Union. Ian MacDonald, in The New Shostakovich, concluded that Pasternaks humiliation and subsequent persecution significantly influenced the First Cello Concerto. Volkov, on the other hand, gave no hint, nor did Elizabeth Wilson in A Life Remembered. Most of what she included, anent the concerto, was Rostropovichs celebration of himself, with this notable exception: In the First Cello Concerto [M.R. speaking], Shostakovich alludes to Stalins favorite song, Suliko. These allusions are undoubtedly not accidental, but...are camouflaged so craftily that even I didnt notice them to begin with. The first time Dmitry Dmitriyevich hummed this passage through to me [from the concluding rondo movement], he laughed and said, Slava, have you noticed?
Cello Concerto No. 1 is a major-key work in minor keys more often than not, recalling the mature Schuberts subtle modulations. It was his first large-scale undertaking after the Eleventh Symphony a year earlier and one of the works he quoted in his autobiographical Eighth String Quartet of 1960.
The published score has a preface, adapted as follows by the late Leonard Burkat:
This four-movement concerto is divided into two large parts: the opening movement, and then three more movements played without pause. Together, they form an integral whole with unified themes and images.
The main theme of the Allegretto first movement is a [four-note] motto that lends itself to dynamic development and reappears many times. The second theme is a rich musical image of Russian character, full of stoic grief and strength of will.
The second movement, Moderato, has a restrained introduction, after which the cello sings a song-like theme against violas in the background. The melodious second theme is highly expressive, leading to a dramatic climax.
The third Andantino Allegro movement is monolog for unaccompanied cello [i.e., a long cadenza] that recalls the first-movement motto and second movement themes while preparing for The Allegro con moto finale in rondo form [that] sums up the whole work, with a coda [based on] the principal subject of the first movement.... The end is both harsh and abrupt.
[allmusic.com]")
![Igor Stravinsky - Mass for chorus and double wind quintet [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iRi_MDy_ks0/mqdefault.jpg "Igor Stravinsky - Mass for chorus and double wind quintet [With score]
-Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971)
-Performers: Ensemble Musikfabrik
-Choir: RIAS Kammerchor
-Conductor: Daniel Reuss
Mass for chorus and double wind quintet, written in 1948
00:00 - I. Kyrie
02:34 - II. Gloria
06:17 - III. Credo
10:45 - IV. Sanctus
14:25 - V. Agnus Dei
After the composition of Oedipus rex (1926-1927) it was unusual for Stravinsky to write a non-commissioned work. Also, since 1926 Stravinsky had been a communicant of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, it seems peculiar that the composer would write a concerted Latin mass. The motivation stems from what seems to have been a negative reaction to some masses of Mozart, which Stravinsky found in a second-hand music store in Los Angeles in 1942. The choice of the traditional Latin text of the Catholic Mass was a practical one: the Russian Orthodox Church proscribed the use of instruments in services, and Stravinsky did not want to write an unaccompanied vocal work.
The ensemble consists of a chorus of children, altos, tenors, and basses, and a double wind quintet. The opening of the Kyrie contrasts the timbres of the wind instruments, and the voices enter by imitating the instrumental introduction. Mirroring the text, the chorus intones three complete statements of Kyrie eleison before the central, Christe eleison section. After the first statement of Christe eleison, the music takes on a clearly articulated pulse, and the children take center stage. The animated atmosphere continues through the return of the Kyrie text. Throughout the Gloria movement the vocal texture alternates between full chorus, duet, and solo. Near the middle, at Domine Deus, a pair of voices evokes a style reminiscent of thirteenth century parallel organum, one instance in the mass that illuminates Stravinskys familiarity with Medieval and Renaissance sacred music (although in Expositions and Developments Stravinsky claimed that he did not hear Machauts mass until after he had completed his own). For the Credo, Stravinsky gave a large nod to tradition by directing that the first phrase, Credo in unum deum, be sung by the celebrant alone. In fact, the composer specified the use of the plainchant melody listed as the authentic Credo intonation in the Liber Usualis. The harmonic organization of the movement bears a close relationship to the pitches of the plainchant intonation, and the opening and closing tonal areas (E and G) match the chants first two pitches. The central part of the movement features a more strident sonority dominated by a major seventh chord. Like most composers of masses before him, Stravinsky set the lengthy Credo text syllabically. The composer described the movement rather succinctly: The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe. The celebrant opens the Sanctus alone, and each of his florid statements of Sanctus is echoed by the chorus. In another nod to tradition, Stravinsky sets the Benedictus off from the rest of the movement, both by setting the text to contrasting music and by framing it with the same music for both appearances of the Hosanna in excelsis. The Agnus Dei is built around an instrumental ritornello, which opens the movement and separates the three lines of text.
[allmusic.com]")
![Igor Stravinsky - Septet [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ijSmRoPzMaY/mqdefault.jpg "Igor Stravinsky - Septet [With score]
-Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971)
-Performers: European Soloists Ensemble, Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)
Septet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello, written in 1953
00:00 - I. ♩ = 88
02:52 - II. Passacaglia, Circa ♩ = 60
07:43 - III. Gigue, dotted ♪ = 112-116
For much of their two respective careers Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were seen by the musical establishment as representing two opposite ideals of twentieth-century music two mutually exclusive stylistic and technical mentalities that, in the end, couldnt possibly be reconciled to one another. Certainly the two composers, by virtually ignoring each other during their lengthy period as neighbors in Hollywood during the 1940s, did little to discourage the animosity that frequently flared up between their respective followers. We now know, however, how wrong that idea was, for almost immediately after Schoenbergs death in 1951 Stravinsky began to explore tentatively at first, then with more surety of purpose the possibilities that the Second Viennese Schools developments might offer him. It is as if composing The Rakes Progress in the late 1940s had finally purged Stravinsky of most of his so-called Neo-Classical urges and left him in a position to begin investigating other vehicles of musical thought. One of the earliest works in which we can really begin to see the incorporation of serial techniques (note that this does not by any means mean twelve-tone techniques at least not yet) into Stravinskys own personal idiom is the remarkable Septet for clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano, violin, viola, and cello, composed during 1952 and 1953 and first performed at Dumbarton Oaks in early 1954.
To be fair, even as early as the 1920s Stravinsky had used recurrent pitch organizations in a way very similar in detail if not sound to the fundamentals of Second Viennese Schools thinking. In the Septet, however, the manner of working such basic intervallic units out on a structural level can rightly be heard as something new in the composers music.
At the beginning of the first of the works three movements we find the clarinet singing out the seven note figure A-E-D-C-B-A-C sharp from which almost all of the thematic and accompanimental material of the entire work is derived. The seventh pitch is certainly of great significance over the course of the work: the conflict of C natural and C sharp within an A tonal context shows, as does the basic superficial style and rhythmic layout of this first movement, a strong connection to the Neo-Classical phase the composer was just beginning to depart from; perhaps even more significantly, that same chromatic alteration is made into the basis of all the chromatic meanderings of the theme used in the second movement.
The second movement, Passacaglia, is built on repeated statements of a sixteen-note subject that begins with the first five pitches (transposed up a fifth) of our intervallic unit. Throughout the seven variations (and one final statement) that make up the movement, all of the basic serial operations are made inversion, retrograde, and the various combinations of the two.
The same intervallic material is used as the basis for four fugal episodes the first and third featuring the strings, the second and fourth the piano and winds in the final, quick-paced Gigue. Throughout the second and third fugues, the piano echoes the music of the string fugues while the woodwinds go off on their own, justifying the idea hinted at all along (including in the title) that the piano is really a kind of mediator between the two disparate instrumental trios.
[allmusic.com]")
![Etude mécanique No. 1 [My composition]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ipL7_tfKF7U/mqdefault.jpg "Etude mécanique No. 1 [My composition]
Etude for Ninths and finger agility")
![Igor Stravinsky - Renard [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iw3jWpJK-JA/mqdefault.jpg "Igor Stravinsky - Renard [With score]
-Compsoer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971)
-Ensemble: Budapest Chamber Ensemble
-Vocal Soloists: Dénes Gulyás, Boldizsár Keönch, György Bordás, László Polgár
-Conductor: András Mihály
Renard [The Fox], Opera-Ballet (Burlesque) for 4 vocal soloists & chamber orchestra. OR: Renard [The Fox], A burlesque for the stage with singing and music, written in 1915-1916
In April 1915 Winnaretta Singer (la Princesse Edmond de Polignac), commissioned Stravinsky to write a piece that could be played in her salon. She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. The work was completed in Morges (Switzerland) in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to the operatic staging or conventions. He created rather a new form of theatre in which the acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and the declamation comments on the musical action. However the piece was never performed in the salon of the princess. It was not staged until 1922.
Stravinskys Renard belongs to a genre perhaps best described as ballet hybrid. In addition to the expected dance elements, Renard is also a burlesque, a musical story that is sung and played. The text was written by Stravinsky himself, after stories of the Fox from the famous collection of Russian folk tales by Alexander Afanasiev. Renard is scored for small orchestra, percussion, timpani, cimbalom, a solo string quintet, two tenor soloists, and two bass soloists.
The story is a farmyard tale in which the Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox , only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Goat. After the Cocks second rescue, the Cat and the Goat strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. Stravinsky employs the singers as part of the orchestra, and though there are exactly as many singers as characters, the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters. (The composer followed this practice in subsequent works of the same type, most notably in Les noces of 1914-1917.)
The players remain onstage at all times, without the kind of choreography one associates with traditional ballet. Rather, as the prefatory note in the score indicates, the various characters should be played by clowns, dancers, or acrobats who perform in front of the curtain. Stravinsky makes prominent use of the cimbalom, a stringed instrument played with mallets, to imitate the sound of a guzla, a similar Russian folk instrument. Stravinsky knew that finding good guzla players (or even the instrument itself) would be difficult, and settled on the cimbalom after hearing it played in a nightclub in Switzerland. According to the composer, most of Renard was actually composed on the cimbalom rather than on the piano that was more usual for Stravinsky. The cimbalom, an instrument on which rapid repeating notes and broad arpeggios are highly idiomatic, contributes significantly to the works linear texture. Stravinsky employs the other instruments in an almost soloistic manner, further contributing to the works polyphonic textures. Renards melodies are wide-ranging and disjunct, while the mixture of modes connects it to the polytonal/polymodal harmonic style of earlier works like Petrushka (1910-1911). Renards relative rhythmic and metric simplicity contrasts sharply with the richly complex rhythmic language of nearly contemporaneous works like The Rite of Spring (1911-1913).
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![Edvard Grieg - 5 Poems, op. 26 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iwMTf9QR2Wg/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 5 Poems, op. 26 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers (Songs 1, 2, 3, 4): Monica Groop (Voice), Roger Vignoles (Piano)
-Performers (Song 5): Marianne Hirsti (soprano), Rudolf Jansen (Piano)
5 Poems for Voice and Piano, op. 26, written in 1876
00:00 - I. Et Håb {Hope}
02:20 - II. Jeg rejste en dejlig Sommerkvæld {I wandered one lovely summer evening}
04:55 - III. Den Ærgjerige {The ambitious one}
06:21 - IV. Med en Primula veris {With a primrose}
07:39 - V. På Skogstien {On a woodland path}")
