Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920; revised 1947)
Agon (1957)
Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam (1964)
Symphony in C (1939)
SWR Symphony Orchestra/Ingo Metzmacher
rec. 2023, Liederhalle and Beethovensaal, Stuttgart, Germany
SWR Classic SWR19156CD [67]
Stravinsky’s late works, like most of the modernist achievements of 20th century music, are favorite targets of timorous or ill-informed detractors. It may explain why many recent performances of this final outburst of youthful creativity sound so loveless, at times even less technically secure than those from back when the ink on these scores was still wet.
For a moment, I braced myself for a letdown by this new all-Stravinsky disc from SWR Music, which includes two of the composer’s most vibrant late scores. My worries, mirabile dictu, were unfounded; at any rate, I should have known better. The SWR Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ingo Metzmacher are long-standing friends of new and difficult music, the former continuing a tradition that goes back to the days when Hans Rosbaud led their precursor ensemble.
Not that Stravinsky’s Agon and Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam is new – at least, no newer than “Tammy” and “A Summer Song”. They also sound anything but difficult in the hands of the SWR Symphony and Metzmacher. The latter score pops and bursts here with an energy I have not heard since my personal favorite recording by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen (Deutsche Grammophon 447 068-2), released almost thirty years ago. Led by Metzmacher, the SWR musicians incisively render the score’s Petrushka-like scampering, pratfalls, and unexpected shifts in tone color. Winds and brass imbue their parts with an air of opera buffa that contrasts with the lustrousness of their string colleagues, who convey the music’s webbing of polyphony with enviable translucence. It is rare to hear the Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam—the distillation of a lifetime’s experience and hopes for a future never to be experienced—played with such understanding as heard here, to say nothing of verve.
That vitality overflows into the SWR Symphony’s finely-sculpted and athletic interpretation of Agon. Throughout, they maintain the requisite equilibrium between elegance and earthiness this music thrives on without strain, in marked contrast to the interpretive rawness of the composer’s own recording (last reissued on Sony Classical 88875026162). If the music in the latter recording suggests a return to an enchanted sound realm distantly reminiscent of Stravinsky’s early Ballet Russes scores, albeit refracted through the self-confident positivism of the Atomic Age, the SWR’s recording offers a final look back at the composer’s neoclassical period. Gurgling horns and growling bassoons and trombones in the “Triple pas de quatre” bring to mind the chattering play of Jeu de cartes, while the vaulting strings in the “Bransle double” recall the opening gambit of Apollon musagète. Michael Gielen conducted an excellent recording of Agon with one of the SWR’s predecessors (last reissued on SWR Music 19023). This new recording conducted by Metzmacher might be even better; at least, I respond more immediately to the way he gets his players to dig deeper into this work’s rhythmic pulse.
Bona-fide neoclassicism in the form of the Symphony in C concludes this disc. Heard in the order programmed, the symphony’s throbbing bass motif emerges from the bass clarinet snort that punctuates a full stop to the preceding Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam, producing a momentary effect that is like seeing a cubist image suddenly transform itself into descriptive realism. As the Tchaikovskian second subject of the symphony’s first movement drifts by in the SWR’s balletic and graceful reading, it is hard not to reflect on the expanses, literal and figurative, Stravinsky would soon traverse when he penned it.
Standing at the head of this program and athwart Stravinsky’s career like a monolith is the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, heard here in the more frequently performed revision from 1947. His changes are more practical than readily audible in this musical necrology, lightened a touch with emphasis on its dance rhythms and wiry lyricism by the SWR wind players. Their corporate density in the closing chorale swallows any lingering light, making the impassive power of this “finis gloriae mundi” all the more affecting.
Néstor Castiglione
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