Four Centuries of Great Music May 28, 2023 Celebration of the 110th Anniversary of the Premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music is a celebration of the 110th Anniversary of the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which is tomorrow.  Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premiered at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on May 29, 1913.

The Rite of Spring was seminal in 20th century music but the powerful rhythmic drive and the bitonality that mark this work were seen in previous works by Stravinsky - particularly his ballet score from 1911 of Petroushka.  Particularly notable is the bitonality of the Petroushka  Chord which occurs when the character Petroushka appears in the ballet.

I am opening this first hour of this four centuries of great music episode celebrating the premiere of the Rite of Spring with a performance of the Igor Stravinsky ballet Petroushka (Original 1911 Version) from a 1961 Columbia records recording of Igor Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra from the album Stravinsky Conducts The Rite of Spring and Petroushka.

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is both evolutionary and revolutionary.  In The Firebird, Stravinsky had begun to experiment with bitonality (the use of two different keys simultaneously). He took this technique further in Petrushka, but reserved its full effect for The Rite where, as the analyst E.W. White explains, he "pushed [it] to its logical conclusion”.  White also observes the music's complex metrical character, with combinations of duple and triple time in which a strong irregular beat is emphasised by powerful percussion.  The music critic Alex Ross has described the irregular process whereby Stravinsky adapted and absorbed traditional Russian folk material into the score. He "proceeded to pulverize them into motivic bits, pile them up in layers, and reassemble them in cubistic collages and montages”.

The score calls for a large orchestra but much of the piece is written chamber-fashion, with individual instruments and small groups having distinct roles.

Part I: The Adoration of the Earth

The opening melody is played by a solo bassoon in a very high register, which renders the instrument almost unidentifiable;  gradually other woodwind instruments are sounded and are eventually joined by strings. The sound builds up before stopping suddenly, Hill says, "just as it is bursting ecstatically into bloom". There is then a reiteration of the opening bassoon solo, now played a semitone lower.

The first dance, "Augurs of Spring", is characterised by a repetitive stamping chord in the horns and strings, based on E♭ dominant 7 superimposed on a triad of E, G♯ and B.  It has been suggested that this bitonal combination, which Stravinsky considered the focal point of the entire work, was devised on the piano, since the constituent chords are comfortable fits for the hands on a keyboard.  The rhythm of the stamping is disturbed by Stravinsky's constant shifting of the accent, on and off the beat, before the dance ends in a collapse, as if from exhaustion.  Alex Ross has summed up the pattern as follows:
one two three four five six seven eight
one two three four five six seven eight
one two three four five six seven eight
one two three four five six seven eight

At first sight there seems no pattern in the distribution of accents to the stamping chords.  But within these there are increasing intervals between beats overlapped by decreasing intervals.  Whether Stravinsky worked them out like this we shall probably never know. But the way two different rhythmic 'orders' interfere with each other to produced apparent chaos is... a typically Stravinskyan notion.”

The "Ritual of Abduction" which follows is described by Hill as "the most terrifying of musical hunts”.  It concludes in a series of flute trills that usher in the "Spring Rounds", in which a slow and laborious theme gradually rises to a dissonant fortissimo, a "ghastly caricature" of the episode's main tune.

Brass and percussion predominate as the "Ritual of the Rival Tribes" begins. A tune emerges on tenor and bass tubas, leading after much repetition to the entry of the Sage's procession. The music then comes to a virtual halt, "bleached free of colour", as the Sage blesses the earth. The "Dance of the Earth" then begins, bringing Part I to a close in a series of phrases of the utmost vigour which are abruptly terminated in what Hill describes as a "blunt, brutal amputation".

Part II: The Sacrifice

Part II has a greater cohesion than part I. Hill describes the music as following an arc stretching from the beginning of the Introduction to the conclusion of the final dance.  Woodwind and muted trumpets are prominent throughout the Introduction, which ends with a number of rising cadences on strings and flutes. The transition into the "Mystic Circles" is almost imperceptible; the main theme of the section has been prefigured in the Introduction. A loud repeated chord, which Berger likens to a call to order, announces the moment for choosing the sacrificial victim. The "Glorification of the Chosen One" is brief and violent; in the "Evocation of the Ancestors" that follows, short phrases are interspersed with drum rolls. The "Ritual Action of the Ancestors" begins quietly, but slowly builds to a series of climaxes before subsiding suddenly into the quiet phrases that began the episode.

The final transition introduces the "Sacrificial Dance". This is written as a more disciplined ritual than the extravagant dance that ended Part I, though it contains some wild moments, with the large percussion section of the orchestra given full voice. Stravinsky had difficulties with this section, especially with the final bars that conclude the work. The abrupt ending displeased several critics, one of whom wrote that the music "suddenly falls over on its side". Stravinsky himself referred to the final chord disparagingly as "a noise", but in his various attempts to amend or rewrite the section, was unable to produce a more acceptable solution.

The recording of the orchestral version of the Rite of Spring is a new release (April, 2023) featuring a live performance by Kent Nagano conducting the Verbier Festival Orchestra  from the album Kent Nagano:Stravinsky (Live)

Stravinsky arranged many of his own works: He reworked “Ronde des princesses” and “Berceuse” from The Firebird for violin and piano; Pulcinella for violin and piano and cello and piano. He also wrote piano arrangements of all of his ballets, from The Firebird to Agon, for the ballet master to use in planning the choreography and, subsequently, in rehearsing dancers.

Stravinsky played these works-in-progress for trusted colleagues during the preparation of the orchestral score (more to publicize the work than to solicit feedback). Stravinsky played a less-than-complete piano version of The Rite of Spring as early as the spring of 1912 for the English critic Edwin Evans, as well as for Diaghilev and Ravel on separate occasions in the early part of 1913. Stravinsky played another early version with Debussy for the noted French music critic Louis Laloy. But these arrangements were never intended to be concert pieces.  A performance piano duo version for either two pianos or piano four-hands was published in 1928.

It is said that Stravinsky himself was unaware of any public performances of the piano-duo version of The Rite until 1967. It was then, on November 6 of that year, that a young Michael Tilson Thomas and Ralph Grierson performed it at a Monday Evening Concert in Los Angeles. That same duo made the first recording of the work in 1969 on Angel Records.  Today I will be playing that recording  of Michael Tilson Thomas and Ralph Grierson performing the piano duo version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from the album “The Rite Of Spring & Scherzo À La Russe For Two Pianos”