4“The Octet began with a dream,” said Igor Stravinsky, “in which I saw myself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some attractive music… I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation and the next morning began to compose.”
Stravinsky’s Octet is written for the unusual combination of four woodwind instruments and four brass instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoons, trumpets (in C and A), tenor and bass trombone. But what really surprised the first audience was that this work sounded nothing like the Stravinsky they’d come to know from works like The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.
Fellow composer Aaron Copland was at the premiere and said there was a “general feeling of mystification that followed the initial hearing. Everyone was asking why Stravinsky should have exchanged his Russian heritage, and a neoprimitive style all his own, for what looked very much like a mess of 18th-century mannerisms.”
In hindsight, this Octet can be seen as the beginning of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, which went on to shape musical history.
The work opens with a Sinfonia in Sonata form - a quintessentially classical form, before a set of Theme and Variations in the second movement. The seventh and final variation is a fugato which Stravinsky considered the most interesting section of the piece. The Finale marries Baroque-inspired staccato lines with syncopated rhythms inspired by a Russian dance called the khorovod. (Notes: Elizabeth Davis)
IGOR STRAVINSKY: Octet (1922-1923)
0:00 I. Sinfonia
4:58 II. Theme and Variations
13:00 III. Finale
Hans Graf, Chief Conductor
Musicians of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra:
Jon Dante, David Smith, trumpets
Allen Meek, Wang Wei, trombones
Jin Ta, flute
Li Xin, clarinet
Liu Chang, Christoph Wichert, bassoons
Recorded at the Esplanade Concert Hall, 31 July 2020.
24 июл 2024
