music in space: stravinsky

Vladimir Ashkenazy: piano
Andrei Gavrilov: piano

Lossless: Ape (img + cue + log) = 206 mb
Lossy: Mp3 (lame "preset standard") = 93 mb
Scans @ 300dpi = 18 mb

Total playing time: 67:42

Recorded: January 1990 / June 1991, Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, UK

Released: 1992, Decca 433 829-2

Track listing:
1. Scherzo a la russe
2. Concerto for 2 pianos: 1. Con moto
3. Concerto for 2 pianos: 2. Notturno
4. Concerto for 2 pianos: 3. Quattro variazioni
5. Concerto for 2 pianos: 4. Preludio e fuga
6. Sonata for 2 pianos: 1. Moderato
7. Sonata for 2 pianos: 2. Largo
8. Sonata for 2 pianos: 3. Allegretto
9. Le Sacre du Printemps: Part I - The Adoration of the Earth
10. Le Sacre du Printemps: The Augurs of Spring
11. Le Sacre du Printemps: Ritual of Abduction
12. Le Sacre du Printemps: Spring Rounds
13. Le Sacre du Printemps: Ritual of the Rival Tribes
14. Le Sacre du Printemps: Procession of the Sage
15. Le Sacre du Printemps: Dance of the Earth
16. Le Sacre du Printemps: Part II - The Sacrifice
17. Le Sacre du Printemps: Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
18. Le Sacre du Printemps: Glorification of the Choosen One
19. Le Sacre du Printemps: Evocation of the Ancestors
20. Le Sacre du Printemps: Ritual Action of the Ancestors
21. Le Sacre du Printemps: Sacrificial Dance

Review:
Gramophone

Without doubt, this has to be one of the most satisfying, nay galvanizing, two-piano recitals I have had the pleasure of sampling for a long time. Ashkenazy and Gavrilov commence proceedings with a rhythmically taut, crisply articulated account of the rarely heard two-piano arrangement of the Scherzo a la russe. Originally intended as music for an abortive project for a war film, the Scherzo is more frequently heard in either its orchestral or jazz ensemble versions, but as Ashkenazy and Gavrilov so persuasively prove there is much to be said for more than an occasional airing in Stravinsky's own arrangement for two pianos. Next, come Stravinsky's two original works for the medium: the Concerto for two solo pianos dating from 1931-5 and the Sonata of 1943. The spiky, contrapuntal textures and acute contrasts of the four-movement Concerto are splendidly projected in this performance, lifting what can often sound like one of Stravinsky's more academic essays into a much more attractive and approachable work, and I was also more acutely aware of the influence of Prokofiev in the first movement than I have been in previous encounters with this work—particularly from the latter's Sixth Sonata and Second Concerto. The briefer, leaner, more economical Sonata for two pianos originally began life as a solo piano sonata, but was redesigned for two pianos when Stravinsky realized that four hands were required to successfully bring out the clarity of the four contrapuntal lines, and this is admirably achieved in this appropriately understated performance.

Finally, Ashkenazy and Gavrilov give what must be one of the most exciting renditions of the two-piano version of The Rite of Spring on disc. Apart from a purely academic viewpoint — or as an occasional reminder of the sheer revolutionary nature of this beast — I have never been entirely convinced of the value of this version. That is until now; Ashkenazy and Gavrilov give a full-blooded performance (no pale imitation of The Rite here) rhythmically incisive and with every minute gear change and every nuance finely judged. Their success, I believe, is partly due to a staunch refusal to emulate orchestral sonorities; that, and simply some astonishing playing—in their hands this sounds like a remarkably pianistic score and I can strongly recommend this as a supplement to the orchestral version. An admirable collection of Stravinsky output for two pianos then, superbly recorded and played by two master pianists on cracking form — what more can I say!

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Seiji Ozawa - Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Boston Symphony Orchestra

Michael Tilson Thomas: piano

Lossless: Ape (img + cue + log) = 344 mb
Lossy: Mp3 (lame "preset standard") = 103 mb
Artwork @ 300dpi = 20 mb

Total playing time: 69:27
Recorded 1968-69 | Released 1999

Recording:
Petrouchka - November 24, 1969, Symphony Hall, Boston
The Rite of Spring - July 1, 1968, Orchestra Hall, Chicago
Fireworks - July 8, 1968, Orchestra Hall, Chicago

BMG/RCA 09026 63311 2

Track listing:

Petrushka, ballet (burlesque) in 4 scenes for orchestra (1947 version)
Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), ballet in 2 parts for orchestra
Fireworks (Feu D'artifice), fantasy for orchestra, Op. 4

1. Petrouchka: Scene I, The Shrovetide Fair: Vivace
2. Petrouchka: Scene I, The Shrovetide Fair: The Magic Truck
3. Petrouchka: Scene I, The Shrovetide Fair: Russian Dance
4. Petrouchka: Scene II, Petrouchka's Cell
5. Petrouchka: Scene III, The Moor's Cell: L'istesso Tempo
6. Petrouchka: Scene III, The Moor's Cell: Dance of the Ballerina
7. Petrouchka: Scene III, The Moor's Cell: Waltz
8. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Tempo Giusto
9. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Wet Nurses' Dance
10. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Peasant With Bear
11. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Gypsies And A Rake
12. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Dance of the Coachmen
13. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Masqueraders
14. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): The Scuffle (Moor and Petrouchka)
15. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Death Of Petrouchka
16. Petrouchka: Scene IV, The Fair (Toward Evening): Appearance Of Petrouchka's Ghost
17. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Intro
18. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Harbingers Of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls)
19. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Mock Abduction
20. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Spring Khorovod (Round Dances)
21. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Games of the Rival Tribes
22. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Procession of the Wise Elder
23. The Rite Of Spring: Part I, The Adoration of the Earth: Adoration of the Earth (Wise Elder); Dance of the Earth
24. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Intro
25. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
26. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Glorification of the Chosen Victim
27. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Summoning of the Ancestors
28. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Ritual of the Ancestors
29. The Rite Of Spring: Part II, The Sacrifice: Sacrificial Dance (Chosen One)
30. Fireworks, Op.4

Reviews:
Classicalcdreview.com:
By the end of the 1960s, less than 10 years after he'd won the Charles Munch competition at Besancon, Seiji Ozawa was the hottest young conductor in the world. Bernstein and Karajan became his mentors (sadly, the latter's influence was dominant by the early 1980s, and the result has been to weep over). In 1963 he was appointed music director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony after 1936. For the next five years he sustained morale and preserved the performance standard of Fritz Reiner (1953-62), while downtown Jean Martinon's tenure (1963-68) went from ecstasy to agony within the first season, and became increasingly embattled—but that's a story for another time and place. Concurrently, Ozawa was music director in Toronto, switching to San Francisco in 1970 for six euphoric seasons onstage and off. In 1970 he also became music director of the Tanglewood Festival, and in 1973 music director of the Boston Symphony—a post he will relinquish in 2002, to the relief of many players in the orchestra and not a few subscribers.

There were personal reasons for Ozawa going soft at the center that border on tragic; he was not, however, a Klemperer who suffered yet surmounted even worse private travail, nor even a Karajan, whose old age was a medical horror, complicated by the erosion of his three-decade dominance world-wide. However, until Ozawa became mealy he was a charismatic conductor and a brilliant interpreter of 20th-century music in particular. Stravinsky was a specialty early on, as these performances testify. The only unsubtle one is the brief Fireworks of 1908, despite the staggering virtuosity of Chicago's orchestra, equaled stateside at the time only by Eugene Ormandy's Philadelphians. This glitters, but doesn't sound as digested as the two ballet scores.

To protect the copyright, but also to trim his lavish 1911 instrumentation down to manageable size for performances by average-size orchestras, Stravinsky revised Petroushka in 1947. This reflected his allegiance to Neo-Classicism (which he claimed to have created after Sacre) until the ballet Agon 40 years later, and the subsequent embrace of Anton Webern's distillate of serialism. The piano part, for example, mainly for the second of the original Petroushka's four scenes, was greatly expanded in 1947. Of late, where orchestral budgets can afford extra players, we've heard a return to the 1911 original, altogether more colorful and in its way more subtle. Ideally one would have a copy of both, and I don't know a better version of 1947 than this one. The Boston Symphony played with a discipline Erich Leinsdorf restored after Charles Munch's dionysian reign. It has the bonuses of a November 1969 Symphony Hall recording without the usual reverberating hangover (credit the original producer Peter Dellheim and his engineer, Bernard Keville), and Michael Tilson Thomas as pianist, when he was the BSO's associate conductor.

The prize, though, is the blistering Chicago Sacre recorded downtown on July 1, 1968—Ozawa's final summer as music director at Ravinia. Although Orchestra Hall had been "renovated" in 1965 with appalling consequences acoustically, there'd been adjustments by 1968, and RCA knew where to place the orchestra for maximum effect without resorting to phony reverb. The sound, in BMG's 24 bit-rate/96 sampling-rate, leaps out at one—as if we shared the podium with Ozawa. It is the most persuasive, viscerally exciting demonstration of 24/96 remastering I've heard so far on any label. As for the interpretation, there are Sacres and there are Sacres (Stravinsky by the way favored "The Coronation of Spring" as an English translation of his full title), and several are staggeringly fine. But Ozawa's kinetic reading of 1968 holds its own, and the orchestra's breathtaking translation into sound nudges any super-digi-fi disc you care to name. As I listen, it tops the Oue/Minnesota Sacre on Reference Recordings, which I bought a few years ago at full price out of curiosity.

When persons speak of the Good Old Days, mine—in the wake of Reiner's semi-retirement and death—include the Ozawa summers at Ravinia, where he returned as a guest through 1971. And Sacre is surely the prize disc of that regime. In closing, BMG has all but obliterated RCA from its "High Performance" insert brochure; the only mention is "digitally remastered in BMG/RCA Studios, New York City." Does anyone else remember the Anschluss of 1938?

(Anent the spelling Petroushka—rather than Petrouchka—in the headnote and review, it was Stravinsky's own phonetic English spelling in those several books co-Crafted (by Robert, that is) in the late '50s. Petrouchka, still to be found in publicity releases, program books and CD literature, is the phonetic French spelling of Stravinsky's original Cryllic. The British have gone further yet. Gramophone spells it Petrushka, which is really too far. There's no "uh" in Petroushka, but neither is there an "ouch." It's allowable to think of the title as "Petrooshka," but how that would look? No, Stravinsky the painstaking multi-linguist, knew best— even though my insistence on Petroushka led to a recent divorce from the Seattle Symphony, where the p-r tail now wags the artistic dog, at least in matters of "promotion" and program book—the one place where it is possible to get things right, if anyone gives a damn. A few of us—who fell in love with semantics before there were computers with, God forbid, spell-checks—still do. We are, however, plainly a dying breed, destined to join the dodo and various sauri on the extinct list.)

Amazon.com editorial review:
The Boston Symphony was at the peak of its powers when it engaged the 34-year-old Seiji Ozawa for this 1969 recording of Petrushka, in which the orchestra's then 24-year-old assistant conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, played the extensive solo piano part. Ozawa, in those years, was capable of striking sparks with any orchestra he faced, and there is a palpable sense of excitement to the Petrushka he uncorks here. The accounts of The Rite of Spring and Fireworks, recorded in 1968 with the Chicago Symphony, are equally dynamic and colorful. BMG's long-awaited 24/96 remastering unleashes the breathtakingly open sound of the original tapes for the first time on CD, and may require a volume cut to preserve peace with the neighbors.

Amazon.com customer review:
Ozawa's account of Stravinsky's most famous ballet is nothing short of astounding. The conductor has the Chicago Symphony playing with total attention. What is so amazing about this recording is that the orchestra is completely controlled and balanced. Although one may prefer a more spontaneous sounding Rite, one would be hard pressed to find a recording with more energy, polish, and power.

Ozawa's Petrouchka (with Michael Tilson Thomas at the piano) is equally amazing. The beauty of phrasing and emotion Ozawa instills into the players of the Boston Symphony orchestra is chilling. Indeed, when this recording was made, Ozawa had just taken the reigns or the orchestra (however, over the years, his energy and intensity has lessened) and they play for their new music director with total conviction.

Fireworks, a short symphonic sketch by the young Stravinsky, shows the influences of his teachers, especially Paul Dukas in the orchestration.

Although not a seminal work, the opus 4 is delightful.

The recording quality is of equal quality. Highly recommended.

Gramophone (partial review, 1969):

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music in space

dinsdag 11 augustus 2009

Stravinsky - Works For Two Pianos

dinsdag 30 juni 2009

Stravinsky - Chamber Music & Historical Recordings

woensdag 17 juni 2009

Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring; Fireworks; Petrouchka

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