Stravinsky: Violin Concerto & Chamber Works (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Stravinsky: Apollon Musagète – Variation of Apollo (Apollo and the Muses); Violin Concerto in D major; Three Pieces for String Quartet; Concertino for String Quartet; Pastorale for Violin, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, and Bassoon; Double Canon for String Quartet. Isabelle Faust, violin; Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth, conductor. harmonia mundi HMM 902718

 

At first glance it might seem a bit strange to encounter a coupling of  a violin concerto and chamber works, but in this particular case, it all makes sense. The German violinist Isabelle Faust (b. 1972) puts it all very neatly when she says, “as this concerto is so clearly inspired by chamber music, we thought it was natural to complete the disc with some pearls from his chamber works that I perform with musicians from Les Siècles. By way of background, it should be noted that Ms. Faust has a long history of performing chamber music; in fact, she is said to have founded a string quartet at the ripe old age of 11. Many readers are perhaps already familiar with Les Siècles from some of their previous recordings (two of which were reviewed in Classical Candor, one by JJP and the other by me); but for those who are not, Les Siècles (“The Centuries”) is a French orchestra that was formed in. 2003 by the French conductor François-Xavier Roth (b. 1951) with the idea that they would play music on instruments appropriate to the time in which the music was originally composed, from the late Baroque era forward to the modern era. 

 

The CD booklet includes a helpfully informative interview with Roth and Faust in which Roth explains that he and his orchestra “have been working n Stravinsky’s works for many years now – since 2009, to be exact. We’ve been exploring his universe, trying to rediscover the rhythms, colours, and dynamics that were characteristic of his time, and trying to convey all the originality of these scores – that is, the meaning they had at their origins. So this project fitted very logically into our programme. And then there’s our friendship with Isabelle Faust, a miraculous meeting of minds if ever there was one, with an artist who is always keen to deepen her understanding of the musical text, to go back to the sources in order to get a better grasp of where each work comes from, how it sounded at the time of its creation. The unswerving companionship between us found new territory to be opened up in this programme.” Faust then explains that in her case, an experience she had of playing Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with a group of friends who used period instruments “paved the way for me. We were excited to discover that this music takes the fullest advantage of the vast palette of these instruments, with their relief, their articulation, their transparency, the possibilities they offer of biting into and caressing the sound. The piece had clearly gained in terms of character, breadth, and theatrical vision from their use. That experience made me want to see what effect similar instruments would produce in the Violin Concerto. And could I have dreamt of better partners for this adventure than Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth? The first rehearsal on gut strings took us completely by surprise, and we were immediately convinced that we were on the right track.” The musicians would go on to perform concerto numerous times in concert halls worldwide before making this recording.

 

The album opens not with the concerto, but rather with a brief (3:09) movement from Stravinsky’s lesser-known ballet, Apollon Musagète (1928), which marked his first collaboration with famed choreographer George Balanchine. Scored for strings only, this is a sound far removed from the more widely known ballets for many people have come to completely define the Stravinsky sound, the bold, often brash, colorful, dynamic, big-orchestra sound of The Rite of Spring, The Firebird, and Petrushka. In contrast, this music from Apollon Musagète is from Stravinsky’s neo-classical style, and especially as played here on gut strings, is nothing like the music of those ballets. Here, however, it serves as a bracing introduction to the feature attraction of this release, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (1931. Those who have not hear then piece may be surprised to hear that as Roth points out, “from the very first chord, Stravinsky writes in a very un-violinistic way: it’s clear that the composer is not trying to flatter the violin or ‘accommodate the violist’s hand’ to impress the audience.” Instead, what you hear is a lot of interplay between the violin and the other instruments in the orchestra. The overall impression is more like a large piece of chamber music featuring a violin than a typical violin concerto. The gut strings on Faust’s violins give her sound a bit of an edge that seem to make it fit in “just right” with the rest of the players. It was fascinating to compare this recording with another great version, Perlman/Ozawa/Boston on DG – the latter sounding a shade more on the “concerto” side, the violin with a sweeter sound; however, the harmonia mundi recording captures a more intimate, playful, yet electric performance.

The remainder of the program comprises brief chamber pieces in which Faust plays but not in a lead role as in the concerto. The Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914) come across as brief sketches, three brief pieces lasting one, two, and four minutes, respectively. More likely to offer musical enjoyment to more listeners are the next two compositions, the Concertino for String Quartet (1920) and the Pastorale for Violin, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, and Bassoon (1923). As its name implies, the Concertino is something of miniature concerto, Faust’s violin playing a prominent role as this six-minute piece loosely follows the fast-slow-fast pattern of a concerto. The Pastorale, as is apparent from its title, features the winds, the violin playing a minor role. The work has a jaunty feeling to it, lively and colorful. Much the opposite is the final selection, the brief (1:26) Double Canon for String Quartet (1959), a dour-sounding 12-tone piece that was intended as a memorial for the painter Raoul Daly. On one hand, it ends the album on something of a negative note; on the other hand, it brings to light a rarely recorded Stravinsky composition.

 

How refreshing it is to have a new release of Stravinsky that is not yet another recording featuring any of the Big Three ballets! Add to that both the sound and the skill of the musicians involved and the excellence of then engineering, throw in the booklet that includes not only an interview with Faust and Roth but an essay about the music by the noted French musicologist Denis Herlin, and you have a recording for which it is easy to give an enthusiastic recommendation.