Search - Stravinsky, Crossley, Salonen :: Works for Piano & Orchestra

Stravinsky Works Impeccably Performed

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Why this superb recording has not garnered more attention is amazing: it is one of the very finest selections and performances of lesser-known but brilliant works by Stravinsky. Recorded in the terrific acoustic of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall (the home of the Aldeburgh Festival) in 1988, these delights are performed by Stravinsky specialist pianist Paul Crossley with the firm support of Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the London Sinfonietta.



The works all followed in time Stravinsky's 'Pulcinella' ballet, a work which served to introduce his classical influence, a far cry from the 'big works' that brought such attention to the composer. The works here included are chamber-like in nature, with brilliant writing for interplay of the piano with the different instruments within the orchestra. 'Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra' is a cheeky romp, full of surprising twists and turns. 'Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments' maintains a percussive approach to the elected instruments: it is buoyant, strident, yet ultimately ingeniously integrated. 'Movements for Piano and Orchestra' has been called one of Stravinsky's 'most impenetrable works' with its focus on serialism, but after a listening or two the work gleams like a series of connected bursts of musical genius.



Salonen conducts the London Sinfonietta in a perfectly executed rendering of the difficult and very exposed 'Symphonies for Wind Instruments', a very wise and strongly supportive work to be programmed with the 'Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments'. Rarely has a composer found such variation of color and sonorities simply with wind instruments. Salonen's insightful pacing makes this little wonder of a composition sing!



This is a recording that may not be available long and it is certainly one that every lover of Stravinsky's oeuvre should add to the collection. Brilliant music making! Grady Harp, April 06"

Stravinsky for piano and orchestra--his most modernist side

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although not a virtuoso performer himself, Stravinsky wrote piano works with orchestra to earn money as soloist. He was an uncompromising modernist when writing for the keyboard, using it eseentially as a percussion instrument. Short, jagged motifs, often in counterpoint with winds, appear often; there is scarcely a melody in any work here, although those who have trained their ears to hear Stravinksy's neoclassicism will find delightful lytic snatches and intriguing thematic events. Also, one could almost say that Stravinsky used harmonic shifts as melody, as in the chorale sections of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments offered as a filler heres. I won't go into detail, since this CD is attracting no notice here, except to say that Salonen and the lestimable English pianist Paul Crossley perform every work with cool proficiency.



The major works are the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, and the Movements for Piano and Orchestra, carrying us from 1924 to 1958 (the Movements are in Stravinsky's thorny twelve-tone style). The CD is filled out with Salonen's outspoken performance of the austere, haunting Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920). For most listeners all these works will sound austere--there's no popular piece to sweeten the mix.



Salonen made this recording in 1988 when he was thirty, and I doubt that a tougher, more invigorating Stravinsky recording has emerged since then."

A good version, though not as good (nor as sonically vivid)

Discophage | France | 02/25/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First, let me say from the outset that, having done a lot of comparative listening on Stravinsky's Concerto and Capriccio, with the scores, my conclusion is that, here as with many other of his compositions, Stravinsky the interpreter (in his stereo remakes from the 1960s with Philippe Entremont, now collated on the mammoth 22-CD set of Sony, with the Concertos on volume 5, Igor Stravinsky: The Recorded Legacy, now reissued for cheaper as Works of Igor Stravinsky [Box Set]) has rarely been equaled, let alone surpassed. And I'll qualify that only with the precision that the Capriccio is in fact conducted by Robert Craft, under the composer's supervision, and its first movement is taken at a tight and nervous tempo which brings it an unexpected flavor of rage, but leaves aside the music's elegance and geniality. I know there is the notion in some circles (first circulated by Boulez I believe) that Stravinsky was a bad conductor. I think it confuses two things. I will make no pronouncement on Stravinsky's conductorial skills in live performance, I'd need to hear more live recordings (the premiere performance of The Rake's Progress in 1951 does have its faulty moments). And how the studio recordings were made, who prepared the orchestras (common wisdom is that it was Robert Craft), how many takes and splices they required, is as uninteresting to me as what happens in the kitchen of a great chef. What we have and what we hear are the recordings, and it is solely on those, independent of any other consideration or "rumor", that I base my claim that Stravinsky was in general the greatest interpreter of his own works.



As good as they are, Crossley and Salonen's interpretations aren't quite in that league, if only (but not only in the Concerto) for sonic reasons.



In the Concerto the conception is closer to the early champion of Stravinsky, Ansermet (in 1955 with Magaloff, Stravinsky: Ballets; Stage Works; Orchestral Works [Box Set]) than to Stravinsky's. The intro is very articulated and taken in a forward-moving tempo, close to Ansermet's. The development section is fast as well, the orchestra is precise, very cleanly articulated and elegant but lacking the kind of massive power Stravinsky brought to it; Crossley is in-sync with that conception, lithe and dynamic but lacking power and with a subdued left-hand. Despite Crossley's commendable efforts to respect Stravinsky's subtle dynamics and the orchestra's elegant articulation, the Largo lacks the majesty and grandeur that Stravinsky and Entremont bring to it, and the great cantabile theme on the trumpet at 0:55 comes to not much, the sonics excessively favoring the timpani and blurring the piano in the orchestral texture. Crossley doesn't come close to Entremont's superb staccato either at 2:48, but when comes the first cadenza at 3:22 he does recapture some of the moving wistfulness Entremont brought to it. Again Crossley and Salonen's finale is elegant, lithe and crisp rather than, as with Stravinsky and Entremont, powerful and biting. Add to that that, sonics helping, Stravinsky has an incomparably more vivid and pungent instrumental presence and character. Don't get me wrong: this is a good version - but Stravinsky with Entremont (as well as Seymour Lipkin with Bernstein, The Royal Edition, No. 86 of 100: Igor Stravinsky, Bishop with Davis,Stephen Kovacevich 2 or the surprising Walter Olbertz with Neumann on Berlin Classics, Stravinsky: Piano Concerto; Concerto Dumbarton Oaks; Suites Nos. 1 & 2; Piano Pieces) bring more out of it.



On the other hand Crossley-Salonen offer an excellent version of the Capriccio, alas again somewhat let down by a recording of the orchestra that is not as vivid as Entremont-Craft on Sony and Rösel-Kegel on Berlin Classics (Strawinsky: Pulcinella Suite; Chant du Rossignol; Capriccio). The first movement fares best and possibly tops all its competitors. With Salonen, I would have expected the tempos to be hard-pressed, but on the contrary: they are again closer to Ansermet's classic elegance with Magaloff than to Stravinsky's supervised and Craft-conducted high-strung vehemence in 1966 with Entremont, Salonen gives plenty of air to the music's geniality and Bachian overtones, and the orchestral details ring out with all desired vividness. The recording doesn't so much single out the piano as it immerses it within the orchestra. Crossley's touch has all the required staccato, clarity and fleetness, and only in the ternary rhythms of the passage starting at figure 14 (2:40) do I find that his left hand doesn't come out enough. The two remaining movements are equally good, with an Andante rapsodico again taken at a moderate tempo, but with a markedly contrasting faster section (più mosso, starting at 1:34), and a tense and dynamic Finale Allegro capriccioso. Unfortunately, in comparison with Craft or Kegel, the orchestral details simply do not have the same presence and vividness and, with Stravinsky's orchestral palette, this means that much is amiss.



I'll withhold any comments on the Movements until I can find an affordable study score and do the same comparative listening as with the two concertos. But as a fine bonus, Salonen offers an excellent reading of the Symphony for Wind Instruments, one that (in accordance with Stravinsky's metronome marks and his own 1951 recording with the NDR Winds, volume 7 of the Sony Stravinsky Edition) is stronger on dynamism and bounce than on the meditative and ritualistic overtones that Boulez, at more stately tempos, brought to it, both in 1975, Olivier Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum; Couleurs de la cité celeste; Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind I and in 1996, Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms; Symphony in Three Movements; Symphonies of Wind Instruments (the cost with Boulez being the lack of dynamism and bounce and the danger of verging on boredom).



Prime recommendation remains Entremont-Stravinsky/Craft, especially since it has the Movements (with Charles Rosen) and an equally outstanding recording of the Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern. For the Concerto and to limit myself to stereo, Lipkin-Bernstein and Bishop-Davis also offer fine readings, and so do the unexpected Olbertz-Neumann, in a widely different approach from the composer's. Likewise in the Capriccio with Rösel-Kegel. In my opinion Crossley-Salonen come after, especially since, for those who don't wish to buy the complete Stravinsky edition, the Concerto CD can be found individually: Stravinsky: Concertos .

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