Igor Stravinsky 1967
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
There aren’t many laughs in Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles (1966, the composer in his mid-eighties), cast in nine vignette-like movements notated with Webernian economy, totaling fifteen minutes – each section simply stopping once the basics have been set out – ‘this is your musical life, Mr Stravinsky’ – intensely rhythmic, severe counterpoint, angularly expressive, yet with very florid writing for the singer soloists, the orchestration carefully chosen, interesting for what is used/not used (no oboes or clarinets, yet a flotilla of flutes, full brass except a tuba, percussion including bells (for a memorable intervention), harp, celesta, piano, and two timpanists, music played at the composer’s funeral in Venice, April 15, 1971, conduced by Robert Craft.
3(III=picc).afl.0.0.2-4.2.3.0-timp(2).perc(2):t.bells/vib/xyl-harp-
cel-pft-strings(6.5.4.3.2)
Either side of such discriminating Stravinsky, Bruno Maderna’s reimagining of music by Giovanni Gabrieli – creative hands joining across the centuries, seventeenth to twentieth – In ecclesiis [sic] and Canzone a tre core, each of purely instrumental interplay, acoustic wings spread high and wide (RAH therefore ideal), ceremonial, lively, sonorous, Maderna respectful of Gabrieli’s intentions, the music updated although not removed from its Venetian grandeur and sensibilities while nursing it into our time without major surgery.
The BBC Scottish players and the 102-strong chorus responded impressively to Ilan Volkov’s rigorous preparation of the equally painstaking Stravinsky, the soprano and bass on top of the extravagant Baroque-isms given to them, and the orchestra also responded with skill and dedication to his well-ordered conducting of the Gabrieli, then adjusting to a clinical approach to Brahms’s Second Symphony – direct, no-nonsense, continually on the move (mostly), spiky, lean-sounding – serving well both detail and rhythm, the very antithesis to expansive, richly moulded, plush-sounding Brahms performances. Just occasionally Volkov lingered, which came across as misplaced in context, as did observing the first-movement repeat, with the clapping following this opener seeming grotesque in delaying progress. For all the lack of love afforded the slow movement, and the crisply dispatched third, this was a sobering experience, Brahms emerging as very much a classicist, convincingly, although it didn’t prevent the Symphony blazing to the finishing line. Thrilling. I hope to listen again.
Gabrieli: In ecclesiis (ed. Maderna)
Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles
Gabrieli: Canzone a tre core (ed. Maderna)
Brahms: Symphony No.2 in D
Jess Dandy, contralto
Ashley Riches, bass-baritone
National Youth Choir
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002hxlb
Further funeral footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsYF6PX8Wfk
A very odd programme. To whom was it directed I wonder and how popular was it in audience appeal?