Pogrebal’naya Pesnya by Igor Stravinsky

[pjme]

Who is going to listen on Medici TV?

Igor's opus 5, rediscovered after 106 years!

http://www.medici.tv/#!/valery-gergiev-stravinsky-chant-funebre

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/igor-stravinsky-lost-work-emerges-after-100-years

P.

[Mahlerian]

I will.  Among Stravinsky's early works, Fireworks is fun, while I find the Symphony in E-flat and the Scherzo Fantastique a bit overextended.  It's true that the composer really only hit his maturity with Firebird, but even the early works display some of the incisive color and rhythmic verve of the music that was to follow.

[Monsieur Croche]

I listened, and without being in a state of excited anticipation but fully expecting an early work of historic / academic interest -- i.e.  I was more curious and expected something like I heard. 

It is earlier than L'oiseau de feu the orchestral writing imbued with the heavy influence of Russian-school Tchiakovsky / Korsakov wind writing / coloration and a mild stripe of that somewhat turn of the century tonality a bit ala Skriabin. 

As another has commented in the link, it is very much what they expected a young Stravinsky would write as an Hommage to his just-deceased teacher at that time.

The work is, other than that, a pretty forgettable (imo, natch) early effort with hints of some of Stravinsky's musical personality therein.  As Mahlerian has said, those distinctive musical traits are far clearer and more assured in L'oiseau de feu which in itself is not the bust-out of the full-out clarity of Stravinsky's musical personality and subsequent MOs so clearly manifest in the subsequent ballet, Petrushka.   

What it, and the other few very early works do show in the spectrum of Stravinsky's writing are the steps from this to L'oiseau de feu, and then what seems like a real leap to Petrushka, that pivotal work in Stravinsky's ouevre from which there is really no looking back to his earlier works other than their being (as engaging and pleasurable as L'oiseau de feu is) of some interest as 'early works from the composer's formative years.'

Of interest and worth a listen re: the timeline of Stravinsky's apparent and relatively quick progress to very much finding his own voice.  Glad I listened.  Check it out :-)


Best regards