The Essential Igor Stravinsky [Limited Edition]

John Reardon (Performer), Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Michael Tilson Thomas (Conductor), Esa-Pekka Salonen (Conductor), Igor Stravinsky (Conductor), Robert Craft (Conductor), Columbia Jazz Combo (Performer), Colin Tilney (Performer), Jean Manning (Performer), Regina Sarfaty (Performer), Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Philharmonia Orchestra of London (Orchestra), CBC Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Columbia Chamber Ensemble (Orchestra), London Sinfonietta (Orchestra), London Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra), Columbia Chamber Orchestra (Orchestra), Cleveland Orchestra (Orchestra), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: John Reardon, Columbia Jazz Combo, Colin Tilney, Jean Manning, Regina Sarfaty
• Orchestra: Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra of London, CBC Symphony Orchestra, Columbia Chamber Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, et al.
• Conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft
• Composer: Igor Stravinsky
• Audio CD (March 25, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Limited Edition
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00008NGAW
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,827 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #3 in Music > Classical > Chamber Music > Octets
  • #7 in Music > Classical > Chamber Music > Septets
  • #97 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Languages > English

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fabulous Introduction to Igor Stravinsky!!, May 18, 2004

By 

Louie Bourland (Garden Grove CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Igor Stravinsky (Audio CD)

Sony Music's "The Essential Igor Stravinsky" truly lives up to its title. This double-CD set includes nearly every important piece of work (either in part or in whole) by the great Russian composer. The set also presents the pieces in chronological order beginning in 1908 with "Fireworks" and ending in 1966 with his final piece, the short but simple "Owl and The Pussycat". In between, there are excerpts from Stravinsky's most famous works including the first part of "The Rite Of Spring" and highlights from the "Firebird" and "Petrushka" ballets. There are also lesser-known works included as well as his harmonically rearranged version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (a rendition which caused a stir in the early 1940's). The entire collection concludes with a rare recorded interview with Igor Stravinsky himself in which he remembers the infamous premere of "The Rite Of Spring".
The CD booklet includes detailed liner notes as well as a written tribute by Trey Anastasio of the band Phish. The sound quality of the recordings is amazing (even on the historic 1934 recording of "Piano Rag Music"). All in all, this an excellent collection of works by the great Igor Stravinsky. In a sense, this compilation gives the composer the 'rock musician' treatment. It's a 'greatest hits' album and a career-spanning retrospective that serves as an ideal introduction to Igor's music. Even if your not a fan of Classical music, it isn't difficult to listen to the works of Stravinsky and not be stirred.
Definitely The Essential Igor Stravinsky!!!

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The libretto is a gem embedded in silver, September 29, 2011

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Igor Stravinsky (Audio CD)

W. H. Auden's libretto is pure poetry. The language is simple but the stanzas in most arias are extremely original in rhythm and in rhyme. He also plays with run-on lines, amplified by the music that makes the rhyme sound awkward and attractive to the ear. We have most of the time a perfect osmosis between the music and the text, between the two rhythmic beats, maybe even too perfect to be true. We are not surprised that in the best Shakespearean tradition words are repeated a certain number of times and that these numbers are meaningful. For one example Anne's Lullaby is perfect. It is ternary to the extreme. Three stanzas with the same rhyming pattern: AABCCDC, Three C rhymes. The line in D (non-rhyming at all) contains the repetition of one word three times. The rhyme in B is going to be identical in the three stanzas and thus be a rhyme. The two ternary elements (one rhyme and one repetition of a word) build a flash of Solomonic justice. Anne is putting Tom to sleep with a lullaby but that sleep is eternal and just. The ternary rhyme that runs over the three stanzas is building the same Solomonic flash of justice, reaching the peace of the Gospels and the Apostles.

This perfect Christian ending is even amplified by the duettino between Anne and her father. Anne's stanza has six lines with the simple rhyme pattern AABBCC, Solomonic indeed. But her father is echoing this sestina with a stanza of three lines using the same rhymes on the pattern ABC. This triplet turns the sestina into a set of nine lines, or three times three rhymes, the hour of Jesus' death, the death of the Savior and we are justified to wonder if Anne has not saved Tom after all and his death is the death of a saved person if not a savior. We could give many other examples of this great poetic art of the libretto.

The story itself is plunging its roots into many traditions. First of all that of the Dickensian poor and hard working man who suddenly turns rich. But here that richness is his doom. Then Faust since the go-between in that business is Nick, Old Nick of course, Satan himself who asks for Tom's soul at the end. But this Satan is tricked by luck or rather his own confidence no one can escape him and the twelfth stroke of midnight falls on an unfinished game that means Satan's defeat. But this defeat is parallel to that of Mephistopheles in the Second Faust by Goethe in which Faust is saved by three women, among whom Margret holds one place. Here the salvation is less formal but quite just as efficient, since Tom wakes up and realizes that the woman he believes is Venus who put him to sleep is gone.

But that phantasm of the end, that Venus Tom is invoking makes him be Adonis, an identity he assumes, even with the wild boar that kills him when he tries to escape Venus' love. There the situation is quite surprising. It is an allusion to Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis of course, but here the wild boar has to be pushed out for that love story to be possible, and This Tom-Adonis is begging for that love whereas in Shakespeare's story and the mythological tradition Adonis is running away from Venus. Maybe we can think Tom has run away from his Venus to be and is thus granted virtual and fictional satisfaction at the end. This difference anyway justifies the end of the opera in Bedlam, which implies Satan has had the last word in a way: he could not get Tom's soul, so he got his sanity and Tom has become insane including in believing Anne is Venus and he is Adonis in love with Venus.

Then of course you have allusions to numerous other works and operas. We can think of Dorian Gray or Lulu or the plays of Wedekind, but that's only secondary in this opera.

What remains about the story is the "moral of the story" as they call it. That's a formal allusion to T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral who ends with a long scene of explanation, justification and moral from the four killing knights. Here the moral is a lot more banal indeed: "For idle hands and hearts and minds the Devil finds a work to do, a work, dear Sir, dear Madam, for you and you." We could look for the multiples of three and we would find quite a few building the devil in this situation, as much as Solomon's number and the twelve apostles, as if there were the assertion that every sinner can be saved in this moral.

The music is good and in the recording I have it is directed by Stravinsky himself, so we can think it is exactly what he wanted. Unluckily it does not compare in creativity with Benjamin Britten's operas. It is more in the musical line of German composers of the first half of the 20th century. We can even think the clear division of the music in recitatives, more elaborate singing in prose very often and arias is in the line of Bach more than post-Wagner and even post-Verdi compositions. Even Mozart had moved away from the three tiers of music (prosody, psalmody and arias). What's more the music does not have the power of the text, even if some moments are very good like the instrumental introduction to the cemetery where Nick is going to be tricked out of his prey.

When this opera is staged - I saw it in Lille, France, among others - the rococo accumulation on the stage and the melodramatic to the point of burlesque exploitation of some scenes like the Bedlam scene or the auction may add a lot of expensive artifacts and props on the stage that may dazzle your eyes but the situation is rather simple and the story maybe not dramatic enough in spite of the allusion to the Pilgrim's Progress in the title.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU