Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Muses
Concerto in D major for string orchestra, K075 “Basel” (1946)
Concerto in E flat major for chamber orchestra, K060 “Dumbarton Oaks” (1937–38)
Apollon musagète, K048 (1927–28)
Camerata Salzburg/Giovanni Guzzo
rec. 2024, Odeïon Theater, Salzburg, Austria
Channel Classics CCS48426 [58]
How do you move forward as a composer if your chosen path is predicated on stylistic restraint? The neoclassical idiom which Stravinsky made so distinctively his own from the mid-1920s onwards is arguably the most creatively challenging of all twentieth-century styles, because its formal and expressive limits are so strict. Contrast, as Stravinsky himself observed in his Poetics of Music, produces an immediate effect; similarity satisfies only in the long run. But what happens when that ‘long run’ is very long indeed? That question hovers over this intelligently programmed and beautifully performed recital.
The album is titled Muses, an obvious reference to Apollon musagète—Apollo, Leader of the Muses—the earliest and most substantial work in the programme. (Rainer Lepuschitz’s booklet essay extends the metaphor further, linking the muses to chamber, concertante and orchestral performance — a charming conceit, if perhaps slightly strained.) It makes an interesting companion to the late Stravinsky disc by Daniel Reuss and the Noord Nederlands Orkest which I reviewed recently. Where that recording plunged us into the ascetic rigours of Stravinsky’s serial works—the extraordinary Requiem Canticles, Threni, the memorial pieces—this one takes us back to the neoclassical heartland: three works composed over a span of nearly twenty years (1927–1946), all for chamber or small orchestral forces, all unmistakably Stravinsky but each posing its own particular challenges. Where the Reuss disc showed a composer who had, in Nicholas Nabokov’s word, ‘overpowered’ serial technique, here we encounter one who must continually outwit the constraints he has embraced. It’s a different kind of mastery, and one which these performances illuminate with striking clarity.
Camerata Salzburg, an ensemble best known for its performances of Mozart and the Viennese classics, might seem an unexpected choice for this music, but it proves an inspired one. Under Sándor Végh, who led the ensemble from 1978 until his death in 1997, Camerata Salzburg developed a distinguished track record in twentieth-century repertoire, recording Bartók’s Divertimento, Berg’s Lyric Suite and indeed Apollon musagète itself for Capriccio. Végh’s ideal of chamber-style playing on an orchestral scale—every player individually responsible yet wholly attuned to the collective—is precisely the discipline this music demands. One hears that inheritance throughout these performances: the beautifully burnished, warm string tone in the Apollon Prologue, for instance, immediately tells you this is an ensemble that knows how to blend and balance from the inside out, rather than having these qualities imposed from the podium.
The recital is presented in reverse chronological order of composition, an interesting decision if one is thinking about that long period of neoclassical composition and its creative returns. We begin with the Concerto in D major for string orchestra, the ‘Basel’ Concerto of 1946, composed for Paul Sacher and his Basel Chamber Orchestra. It’s a piece in which Stravinsky explores virtually every conceivable string technique—spiccato, pizzicato, lyrical legato—across three lively movements, and Camerata Salzburg bring great attack and energy to it, rendering each movement with a different grace and stylistic gradation. There’s a lovely lightness to the playing but real weight and emphasis where needed, particularly in the driving outer movements. The rondo markings are taken seriously too; one feels that the players understand the form, not just the notes, which makes a considerable difference to the integrity of the whole and our appreciation of it.
The Concerto in E flat, ‘Dumbarton Oaks’ follows. Stravinsky described it as a small concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos, and the Bachian debt is immediately audible in the first movement’s instrumental interplay between strings, woodwind and brass—a kaleidoscopic concertante texture that Camerata Salzburg make sound so fresh and rewarding it’s as if they had just commissioned the piece and were playing it for the first time. The Allegretto has a sort of simple stateliness (which works surprisingly well) and real wit, qualities not always found together in performances of this movement. In the finale there’s a tension and drama to the playing as well as real precision and rhythmic drive which ensure that the music’s energy never dissipates into mere busyness.
Despite my enjoyment of both concertos there’s no doubt in my mind that the earlier Apollon musagète is of a different order, a work where Stravinsky seems to be endlessly inventive within his chosen form. The performance here is superb. The Prologue is magical—those warm, luminous strings conjuring the birth of Apollo with a rapt beauty that immediately sets the work apart. Guzzo’s solo violin in the ‘Variation d’Apollon (Apollon et les Muses)’ is so well judged: poised, singing, never forcing the tone, exactly the kind of playing that lets Stravinsky’s melodies breathe. Then listen to the exquisite line in the ‘Variation de Calliope’, where the Alexandrine verse rhythm that Stravinsky took as his structural model is rendered with a natural eloquence that never sounds academic. Balanchine famously described Apollon as the turning point of his life, a score whose discipline and restraint taught him that he too could dare not to use everything, that he could eliminate. One hears that quality of purposeful restraint beautifully realised here, particularly in the way Camerata Salzburg resist any temptation to romanticise the score—and yet when the ‘Apothéose’ arrives, they conjure an immense grandeur and power seemingly out of nowhere, as if the accumulated restraint of the preceding movements has been building towards this overwhelming release. Throughout, one is aware that the performers never forget this is a ballet score: eminently danceable, the rhythms precise and alive, the phrasing shaped by an implicit physicality.
Is there sufficient variety across the disc as a whole? With three neoclassical works for broadly similar forces, the risk of monotony is real, but Stravinsky’s own answer to that question—that similarity is hidden and must be sought out, whereas variety is everywhere and merely tempts with facile solutions—is vindicated by these performances, which are sufficiently vivid and individual to reward the close attention that similarity demands, even if, as I’ve said, the best wine is only saved until last by dint of the programming. The committed playing of Camerata Salzburg ensures that the distinctive character of each work is brought out, and the recorded sound is good throughout. The sleeve notes by Lepuschitz are somewhat tangential—one might have wished for more on the music and less on the biographical context of Dumbarton Oaks as a diplomatic venue—but they provide the basic information a listener needs. I for one am hoping for more ‘modern’ music from this combination.
Dominic Hartley
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