Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
The Firebird (L'oiseau de feu) (Suite No.2, 1919)
Petrushka (1947 Suite)
Manuel de Falla (1876 - 1946)
The Three-Cornered Hat (EI sombrero de tres picos)
Suite No.1
Suite No.2
Ritual Fire Dance from El amor brujo
Interlude and Dance from La vida breve
Igor Stravinsky was the son of a distinguished bass soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, creator of important roles in new operas by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. He was born, the third of four sons, at Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland in the summer of 1882. In childhood his ability in music did not seem exceptional, but he was able to study music privately with Rimsky-Korsakov, who became a particularly important influence after the death of the composer's imperious father in 1902. He completed a degree in law in 1905, married in the following year and increasingly devoted himself to music. His first significant success came when the impresario Dyagilev, a distant relative on his mother's side of the family, commissioned from him the ballet The Firebird, first performed in Paris in 1910. This was followed by the very Russian Petrushka in 1911 for the Dyagilev Ballets russes, with which he was now closely associated, leading in 1913 to the notorious first performance of The Rite of Spring, first staged, like the preceding ballets, in Paris. Although collaboration with Dyagilev was limited during the war, when Stravinsky lived principally in Switzerland, it was resumed with the ballet Pulcinella, based on music attributed to Pergolesi, and starting Stravinsky's association with neo-classicism. The end of the association with Dyagilev was marked by w hat the impresario considered a macabre present, the Cocteau collaboration Oedipus Rex.
Stravinsky has been compared to his near contemporary Picasso, the painter who provided decor for Pulcinella and who through a long career was to show mastery of a number of contrasting styles. Stravinsky's earlier music was essentially Russian in inspiration, followed by a style of composition derived largely from the eighteenth century, interspersed with musical excursions in other directions. His so-called neo-classicism coincided with the beginning of a career that was now international. The initial enthusiasm for the Russian revolution of 1917 that had led even Dyagilev to replace crown and sceptre in The Firebird with a red flag, was soon succeeded by distaste for the new regime and the decision not to return to Russia.
In 1939, with war imminent in Europe, Stravinsky moved to the United States, where he had already enjoyed considerable success. The death of his first wife allowed him to marry a woman with whom he had enjoyed a long earlier association and the couple settled in Hollywood, where the climate seemed congenial. Income from his compositions was at last safeguarded by his association with Boosey and Hawkes in 1945, the year of his naturalisation as an American citizen. The year 1951 saw the completion and first performance of the English opera The Rake's Progress, based on Hogarth engravings with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kalhnan, a work that came at the final height of the composer' s neo-classicism. The last period of his life brought a change to serialism, the technique of composition developed by Arnold Schoenberg, a fellow-exile in California, with whom he had never chosen to associate. In 1962 he made a triumphant return to Russia for a series of concerts in celebration of his 80th birthday. Among his final compositions are the Requiem Canticles of 1965-6 which follow his Requiem Introitus for the death of the poet T. S. Eliot, but prefigure his own death, which took place in New York in April, 1971. He was buried in the cemetery on the island of San Michele in Venice, his grave near that of Dyagilev, whose percipience had launched his career sixty years before.
The ballet The Firebird (L'oiseau de feu) was devised for Dyagilev by Fokin. Music was originally commissioned from Lyadov, but delay on his part led to an invitaion to Stravinsky, who had already scored for Dyagilev two movements of Les Sylphides for the 1909 Paris season. Decor was by Golovin, with costumes for the Firebird, danced by Karsavina, and for the Tsarevna by Bakst. Stravinsky started the music in November 1909 and completed it in orchestral score by May, 1910, in time for its first staging at the Paris Opéra on 25th June. He later arranged three concert suites from the ballet. The second of these, written in 1919, uses a smaller orchestra than the extravagant original ballet score.
Prince Ivan captures the exotic Firebird in the magic garden of the ogre Kashchey. He releases her when she gives him one of her feathers, to be used to summon her help in moments of danger. Ivan fans in love with the beautiful Tsarevna, one of thirteen princesses held prisoner by Kashchey, whom Prince Ivan finally defeats with the help of the Firebird. In the second Suite the first dance of the Firebird is followed by the dance of the Princesses, based on Russian folk-songs. The dance of the ogre Kashchey and his subjects leads in the ballet, to the Firebird Lullaby, and the Suite ends with the rejoicing of the Finale, when the Prince and his Princess are united.
Petrushka, a burlesque in four scenes, was completed in May 1911 and first staged in Paris a month later under the musical direction of Pierre Monteux. Stravinsky had at first considered a concert piece for piano and orchestra, with the former as an uncontrollable puppet, eventually defeated by the orchestra. Discussion with Dyagilev led to the composition, instead, of a ballet, based on the Russian puppet Petrushka, who here comes to life, to be killed by his rival for the hand of the Ballerina, the Blackamoor. Choreography was by Fokin and decor by Alexandre Benois, with Nijinsky in the title role. In 1947 Stravinsky re-scored the work for a smaller orchestra, with triple instead of quadruple woodwind and a single harp.
The opening scene shows the Shrovetide Fair in St Petersburg. There are holiday crowds in Admiralty Square. On one side a man plays a hurdy-gurdy, the sound rivalled when another appears with a musical box. The Showman draws back the curtains of his puppet theatre to show Petrushka, the Ballerina and the Blackamoor, puppets that he brings to life with his flute. In the second scene, in his cell, Petrushka suffers at the cruelty of his master, hoping to find relief in the love of the Ballerina, who rejects him. The Blackamoor, however, succeeds in charming the Ballerina, but their dalliance is interrupted by the jealous appearance of Petrushka. Outside at the fair groups of revellers dance, the wet-nurses, followed by a peasant with a performing bear, the appearance of a drunken merchant, and a dance of the coachmen. From the puppet theatre a noise is heard, and Petrushka emerges, pursued by the Blackamoor, who kills his rival with his scimitar. The Showman reassures the crowd, showing them that Petrushka is only a puppet, but as night comes on and the people disperse, the ghost of Petrushka is seen above the booth, mocking them.
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was the leading Spanish composer of his generation, writing music that was both acceptable internationally, and yet captured the essence of ill that is Spanish. He was born in Cádiz in 1876 and had his first music lessons from his mother, Catalan by birth. His early education was in Cádiz, a city that allowed him to develop his musical talents and interests and introduced him to the music of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, whose nationalist example he resolved to follow. By the age of seventeen he had already decided to be a composer and to write music that expressed in worthy terms the spirit of his own country, something in which his immediate predecessors had had no very significant success. Foreign composers had turned their hand to the composition of Spanish music, but the nineteenth century had produced little of significance, until the advent of the Catalan composers Isaac Albeniz and Enrique Granados, whose achievement Manuel de Falla was to excel.
From Cádiz de Falla moved to the Conservatory in Madrid, where he was joined by the rest of his family, whom he helped to support by writing popular music. The principal musical influence on him in Madrid was Felipe Pedrell, who had also guided Albeniz and Granados towards a new kind of musical nationalism. After some success with other compositions, de Falla wrote music of more lasting worth in his opera La vida breve, completed in 1905 and first performed in Nice in 1913. In the same year it was staged at the Opera-Comique in Paris, at the suggestion of Paul Dukas. By then de Falla had already been in the French capital for six years, in contact with Ravel and Debussy, and broadening his technique in a way that would have been difficult in the relative isolation of Madrid.
In 1914 de Falla returned to the Spanish capital, where his ballet El amor brujo was staged successfully in 1915. The choreographer and principal dancer was Pastora Imperio, wife of the toreador El Gallo and daughter of the famous gypsy dancer La Mejorana, from whom the composer derived a more intimate knowledge of this aspect of Spanish tradition. At the same time he began his long study of Cante jondo, the folk music of Andalusia. Meanwhile for the Russian impresario Dyagilev, who had toyed with the idea of making use of Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), for piano and orchestra, for a Spanish ballet, he wrote the ballet score El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), first staged in London by the Ballets Russes in 1919. In the same year he moved to Granada, where he remained until the end of the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 he accepted an appointment in Buenos Aires and died in Argentina in 1946, his final massive choral work, Atllintida, unfinished, although it had occupied him intermittently for some twenty years.
Manuel de Falla's ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, originally a pantomime under the title El corregidor y la molinera, is based on a story by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. The plot concerns the jealousy of a miller, whose attractive wife has been subjected to the attentions of the senile Corregidor. The ballet was mounted in 1919 with decor by Picasso and choreography by Leonid Massin and includes examples of traditional Spanish dances.
El amor brujo, with its famous Ritual Fire Dance, tells the story of the gypsy girl Candelas, haunted by the spirit of her dead lover, exercised finally by the ritual dance, which allows her to marry her new lover, Carmelo. The two-act opera La vida breve, written ten years earlier, deals with the jealousy of Salud, whose beloved Paco marries another, to be cursed by Salud, who falls dead of a broken heart at the feet of the one she had loved.
BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels
The history of the BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels goes back to the birth of the Belgian Radio in the 1930s. Under its conductor Franz André, it gained a world-wide reputation for its interpretations of the latest compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, Bartók, Hindernith and other twentieth century composers. The orchestra gave the first European performance of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra in Paris and the first West European performance of the Fourth Symphony by Shostakovich, and has, over the years, worked with many leading conductors, from Pierre Boulez, Paul Hindernith and Darius Milhaud to Lorin Maazel and Zubin Mehta. In 1978 the Radio Symphony Orchestra was dissolved and both the Flemish and the French Radio divisions set up their own symphony orchestras. The Flemish network soon had a new orchestra, the BRT Philharmonic, with some ninety musicians and Fernand Terby became its principal conductor from 1978 to 1988. Since 1988, Alexander Rahbari has been the principal conductor and musical director of the new BRT Philharmonic Orchestra.
Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava)
The Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest symphonic ensemble in Slovakia, was founded in 1929 at the instance of Milos Ruppeldt and Oskar Nedbal, prominent personalities in the sphere of music. Ondrej Lenárd was appointed its conductor in 1970 and in 1977 its conductor- in-chief. The orchestra has given successful concerts both at home and abroad, in Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Hong Kong and Japan. For Marco Polo the orchestra has recorded works by Glazunov, Glière, Miaskovsky and other late romantic composers and film music of Honegger, Bliss, Ibert and Khachaturian as well as several volumes of the label's Johann Strauss Edition. Naxos recordings include symphonies and ballets by Tchaikovsky, and symphonies by Berlioz and Saint-Saëns.
Alexander Rahbari
Alexander Rahbari was born in Iran in 1948 and was trained as a conductor at the Vienna Music Academy as a pupil of von Einem, Swarowsky and Osterreicher. On his return to Iran he was appointed director of the Teheran Conservatory of Music and took a leading position in the cultural development of his country. In 1977 he moved to Europe, winning first prize in the Besançon International Conductors' Competition and the Geneva silver medal. In the 1986-87 season he appeared for the first time with the BRT Philharmonic and in September 1988, accepted appointment as principal conductor.
Kenneth Jean
Associate Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Florida Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Jean is a young conductor making his presence known both nationally and internationally. Born in New York City, he grew up in Hong Kong and returned to the United States in 1967 to live in San Francisco. After violin studies at San Francisco State University, he entered the Juilliard School at the age of 19 and was accepted into the conducting class of Jean Morel. The following year he made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of New York and was immediately engaged as the orchestra's Music Director. From 1979 until 1985 Kenneth Jean served as Resident Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Previously, he was Conducting Assistant of the Cleveland Orchestra for two seasons. He has recorded works by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Falla, Albeniz and Ravel for Naxos, and Chinese contemporary works for Marco Polo.
