NRR Project: Stravinsky conducts 'The Rite of Spring' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “The Rite of Spring”

Composed by Igor Stravinsky

Conducted by Igor Stravinsky

New York Philharmonic

Recorded 1940

30:56

Composer Edgard Varese, who was there at its premiere in Paris on May 29, 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, described its “cruel harmonies.” Its composer Stravinsky described the crowd’s reaction to it as a “terrific uproar.” It changed music forever. It was decades ahead of its time. It is called the most significant musical composition of the century, the founding document of modernism.

It is wildly jagged, staggered, and dissonant. It ignores all the rules of classical music; it brashly tears through a seemingly willy-nilly collection of percussive, atonal, compelling music. Wildly irrational, seemingly. It confounded the orchestra; the premiere’s conductor had to tell the players not to stop and point out what they thought were wrong notes. The orchestra laughed at one point; Stravinsky lit into them.

It began its life as the music for the dance of the same name via the famous Ballets Russes, led by the legendary impresario, Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929). He was a pivotal figure in the history of the avant-garde in European art at the time. It is he who elevated dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1888-1950) to prominence; he was known for his commissioning the most forward-thinking of compositions for his ballet troupe.

Stravinsky (1882-1971) was an ambitious composer, having previously penned for Diaghilev the successful scores for Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). Rite of Spring was different, an urgent, lurching explosion of sound. He now put himself in the service of anarchic impulses, taking incredible chances musically and breaking the future of music out and away from its point of origin in, remarkably, Russian folk music. It has inspired more recordings than any other 20^th century piece; it has inspired many books. Its relevance to modern culture is persistent.

The setting is pagan Russia. A woman predicts the future. Young girls dance together. Two groups rival each other on stage. A sage blesses the Earth. There is ecstatic dancing. Next comes a “mystic circle” of girls, after which one of the girls is selected as the sacrificial victim. She dances herself to death.

At the work’s premiere, many booed – it is said, at Nijinksky’s bizarre choreography – and many others fought back. The crowd came, for a time, undone; the performance became legendary.

Stravinsky turned it into a concert piece; he toured it for years, tinkering with it until late in his career. It is siad that this recording, with the New York Philharmonic in 1940, most closely qualifies as the composer’s preferred performance of the work. This was also the year in which the Rite had been used by Disney as a setting for a sequence in that company’s Fantasia. The story of the evolution of the dinosaurs was a natural fit for the music; it made the piece a part of the cultural mainstream.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Art Tatum plays Sweet Lorraine.