There are pieces by Stravinsky that I enjoy. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you could probably guess which one – you know, his “greatest hits.” However, he’s not a composer I listen to very often and/or one I know very much about. Therefore, I thought I’d try listening to something by him this week, and I chose the violin concerto in D major at random. The concerto, which premiered in 1931, is a neo-classical piece and it’s comprised of four movements:
FYI: Stravinsky's chord resolves easily to an A major chord (think of an A major chord where the third goes up a half-step) or a D major chord (think D major where the third comes down a full step). However, in the case of this concerto, the chord is played in stark severity at the start of each movement followed by three pounding quarter notes or -- in the third and fourth movements -- some variation of eighth and/or sixteenth notes; then the movement moves on, as if a speaker were to pound a gavel at the start of a meeting to signal the start of the anticipated discussion.
The first movement is jaunty and whimsical. I did like the “banter” between the violin and the low sixteenth notes at section 22 (is that a bassoon?), the various tricky rhythms throughout the piece, and the quirky dissonance which added a flavor of imbalance. Some sections of the work (the movement and the entire concerto) reminded me of the comic energy and industrial tone of Raymond Scott’s “Power House." Movements II and III, as noted above, are designated as “Arias,” so they have they have the feel of musical “fantasies” rather than conventional forms for a concerto. As a result, the piece seems a bit disjointed, lacking the coherence of the traditional form. According to the article in Wikipedia, “Though Stravinsky told his publisher he wanted to write ‘a true virtuoso concerto,’ ‘the texture is always more characteristic of chamber music than orchestral music’ – and that is true, as throughout much of the concerto, the violin and orchestra seen to play off each other rather than it being a piece to showcase the violin. The final movement is a fun piece that combines all of the quirky flavors of the first three movements but moves at a faster clip – and then at section 119 it picks up the tempo even more! Interestingly, the concerto was choreographed twice by George Balanchine. First, as "Balustrade" in 1941. Then, in 1972 he created a new ballet entitled "Violin Concerto," and he later renamed it the “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” That ballet premiered in 1972 with the New York City Ballet. I can see where the dissonance and idiosyncratic rhythms would have appealed to Balanchine. It’s a fun piece. Maybe not a concerto I’ll listen to often, but it was certainly enjoyable – and I think it would be fun to see the choreography set to the piece.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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