Stravinsky

Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" has always been a favorite, despite hearing (at an impressionable age) Stokowski's version (complete with dinosaurs!) featured in Disney's "Fantasia". I listened a lot to the Pierre Boulez recording, with his surgically precise rhythms and whiplash dynamics, so much so that I internalized the recording --- Stravinsky's own version sounded anemic to me.

A few years ago, Valery Gergiev began cutting a swath through the Russian classical repertoire, and his version of "The Rite" struck me as brash to the point of rudeness, with a dynamic range Boulez and his engineers could only dream of. "That's not how it's supposed to sound!" I fumed -- then I remembered the stories of the piece's Paris premiere and how the totally unexpected cacaphony put the audience in an uproar. Ah, congrats, Valery -- you made the work exciting again after I'd carefully mummified it in my head.

Recently a DVD performance of "The Rite" and "The Firebird" conducted by Gergiev "Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes" came to my attention, and as wonderful as "The Rite" is (complete with a reconstruction of the original choreography by Nijinsky), it's "The Firebird" that I found utterly compelling, due to the dancing of Ekaterina Kondaurova as the Firebird. I know nothing about ballet (and probably wouldn't admit it if I did) but even my uncultured brain could appreciate the stunning work of Kondaurova. Don't miss it!