Programme PDF - London Symphony Orchestra

He never lost his openness to jazz, and the Ebony Concerto, written
for Woody Herman in 1945, shows once again how cleverly he could
make its mannerisms his own. The piece, again in three movements,
is exactly like a concerto grosso (where there’s a group of soloists
within a bigger group, rather than just one soloist) in jazz mode, a
sort of neo-Art Deco (you can almost hear the saxophonists sway).
Fascinating to have a chance to compare this with the more orthodox
neoclassicism (if there is such a thing) of the Dumbarton Oaks
concerto for a 15-piece chamber orchestra, where the starting point
is a Bach Brandenburg, but the music soon escapes into a laboratory
of its own and experiments with fragments of the idiom. Stravinsky
composed this fascinating masterpiece in 1938 for Robert and
Mildred Bliss, whose Washington home gave it its informal sobriquet
(Stravinsky called it, more soberly, Concerto in e-flat).
The remaining works in the programme show a different aspect of
Stravinsky’s artistic opportunism. The Concertino, originally composed
for string quartet in 1920, was rearranged for twelve instruments in
1952, as a way out of a creative block after completing The Rake’s
Progress. In the same way the Eight Instrumental Miniatures, for
a slightly different set of 15 players from Dumbarton Oaks, is a
transcription (1962) of the eight little child-like piano pieces of Les
Cinq doigts (The Five Fingers), composed in 1921. In both cases
Stravinsky tinkered, rewrote, added lines, sometimes expanded.
These are no mechanical transcriptions. They let us into the master’s
workshop and permit us to observe the creative mind in action –
even in these tiny pieces leaving nothing to chance.
Finally, the exiguous Fanfare for a new theatre, composed in 1964
for the opening of the new York State Theater in Lincoln Center,
is professionalism on the smallest scale. Lincoln Kirstein, who
commissioned it, wanted a half-minute fanfare. He received a halfminute
fanfare, to the second. Unlike some of his models, Stravinsky
never played the prima donna. He simply got on with the job.
Programme Notes © Stephen Walsh
UBS Soundscapes is the long-standing partnership
between UBS and the London Symphony Orchestra
that’s shaping the future of music.
Founded on an established relationship,
UBS Soundscapes is a local, national,
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that’s inspiring creativity, developing talent
and building community ties through
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UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica
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