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5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Stravinsky - The New York Times

Dive into the composer who changed music history and gave Mikhail Baryshnikov “my first heady sniff of the West.”

In the past, we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion and symphonies.

Now we want to convince those curious friends to love Igor Stravinsky, possibly the widest-ranging and most influential composer of the 20th century, and an inspiration for some of George Balanchine’s ballet masterpieces. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.

Thinking about Stravinsky, the first thing that jumps to my mind is the beginning of the second part of “The Rite of Spring” — “The Sacrifice.” I’m reminded of the video that Leonard Bernstein made rehearsing it, and of its powerful use in Disney’s “Fantasia,” as dinosaurs roam the earth. It’s a quiet, tension-filled moment after all of the decibels before and after. Seeing Bernstein rehearse, and hearing him conduct this passage, highlights what is so special and vivid about this part of the score. To my ears, it is the best example of how primitive, intuitive and wild music could be in the early 20th century.

“The Rite of Spring”

London Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Sony)

I was 12 in 1960, when I heard this music for the first time. The ballet scores of Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Delibes and a host of others were already in my bones, but this was everything I knew turned upside down and inside out. The rhythms were fresh, exciting and utterly foreign. The National Ballet of Cuba was in Riga, Latvia, my hometown, dancing Balanchine’s “Apollon Musagète,” his first collaboration with Stravinsky and the ballet he later called “his artistic coming-of-age.” He was 24, and Stravinsky was 46. From these two Russian modernists, and a cast of gorgeous Cuban dancers, came my first heady sniff of the West.

“Apollon Musagète”: Coda

London Symphony Orchestra; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

Stravinsky’s Concerto in E flat for 15 instruments — always known as “Dumbarton Oaks,” after the Washington mansion where it was first performed in 1938 — is wonderfully typical of his so-called Neo-Classicism, in that it isn’t Classical at all: The model is Bach, and in any case that model is abandoned after the brilliant opening, an obvious crib from the Third Brandenburg Concerto. Stravinsky soon picks up little motives of his own, plays around with them, monkeys with the rhythm and the bar lines, and generally teases expectations. The first movement is one of the most joyous pieces of modern music. The other two movements are great, too, but one can’t have everything.

“Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto

English Chamber Orchestra; Colin Davis, conductor (Decca)

After being led into decadence and ruin, the young Tom Rakewell, protagonist of Stravinsky’s 1951 opera “The Rake’s Progress,” is committed to an asylum and visited by the ever-faithful Anne Trulove. She sings him a lullaby, “Gently, little boat,” with words by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman — music beguiling in its simplicity, scored for soprano and just two flutes. Between its verses, the other inmates, listening from their cells, sing choral refrains wondering what these “heavenly strains” are, bringing solace to their “tormented brains.” Finally, Anne’s father joins her in a short, solemn duet, a farewell blessing to Tom that unfolds over steady, Baroque-like bass lines.

“The Rake’s Progress”

Judith Raskin, soprano; Don Garrard, bass; Sadler’s Wells Opera Chorus; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Igor Stravinsky, conductor (Sony)

The “Scherzo à la Russe” is a treasure trove of great rhythms that, like so much of Stravinsky’s music, makes me want to move my body. This miniature piece is overflowing with color, flavor and refreshing juxtaposition. I first heard it as a young dancer at the School of American Ballet, where I learned how Balanchine sculpted music into three-dimensional form. Just like his choreography, this music builds on complementary but opposing forces. Elegant and powerful, witty and alive, the piece crafts a perfect puzzle of musical ideas. To me, it’s part music box and part marching band, played with the exactness of a Swiss clock and the flavor of a savory Russian hors d’oeuvre. It’s a gem that makes you want more.

“Scherzo à la Russe”

Berlin Philharmonic; Bernard Haitink, conductor (Decca)

The premise of this ballet-oratorio could hardly be homier: everyone getting ready for a provincial Russian wedding. Yet Stravinsky endowed even convivial village life with the mysterious, savage beauty of “The Rite of Spring,” which he’d written a few years before. Though he considered a huge “Rite”-size orchestra for “Les Noces,” he ended up paring down the score to just voices and percussion, including four pianos. The result is both rich and stark, primitive and complex. Tapping into folklore, Stravinsky drew out the timelessness at the heart of modernism.

“Les Noces”

MusicAeterna; Teodor Currentzis, conductor (Sony)

Stravinsky made references to early jazz starting in 1918, in works like “Ragtime” and “L’Histoire du Soldat.” But it was in his “Ebony Concerto” — written in 1945 for the clarinetist Woody Herman’s group — that he most effectively incorporated American elements. Without pretending to be jazz, he honors the modernism inherent in that genre.

Before the clarinet has a chance to shine, Stravinsky shows a flair for divvying up work between the trumpet and reed sections, a riff on swing-era orchestras. Accelerations (and feints) in the first movement suggest an affinity with the bebop of Charlie Parker, who admired Stravinsky. The blend of sinuous melody and rambunctious structure recalls the danceable exuberance of his ballets.

“Ebony Concerto”

Benny Goodman, clarinet; Columbia Jazz Ensemble; Igor Stravinsky, conductor (Sony)

The trumpeter Lewis “Flip” Barnes first hipped us to Stravinsky’s nasty, labyrinthine smorgasbord “The Rite of Spring.” But it was video of the Tanztheater hell-raiser Pina Bausch’s 1975 fever-dream adaptation, stage covered in soaked soil, that made us realize “The Rite” rendered analogous the violence of nature in bloom and sexual assault.

In 2004, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber asked Butch Morris to adapt six of the wickedest motifs from the work’s first movement, then generate a signature studio “conduction.” The result, “The Rites,” speaks to the Blackest aspect of Stravinsky: the inner friction between his mastery of European form and his alienation in Hollywood as a non-Western exile. George Lewis once told us that jazz musicians love “The Rite” because of how much “booty” it’s got, and Stravinsky was bootylicious with the outsider blues in La La Land. Postmodern Black people can relate — and, with guitars, cellos, Farfisas and turntables, can reboot and regroovulate Bruh Igor’s funky symphonic mutha.

Butch Morris’s “The Rites”

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber

Stravinsky grumpily wrote of his Octet: “In general, I consider that music is only able to solve musical problems, and nothing else. Neither the literary nor the picturesque can be of any interest in music.” There’s no reason to agree, for the middle movement of his first Neo-Classical masterpiece boasts one of his greatest melodic inspirations, a simple march that seems to be mildly offended by an unspecified slight. As the variations pick up steam, a pair of that most Stravinskian of instruments, the bassoon, lays down an irresistible bass line. It’s 1922, baby!

Octet for Wind Instruments

Igor Stravinsky, conductor (Sony)

Hey, Petrushka! What’s up? Have you exchanged the primal force of “The Rite of Spring” for a Baroque costume? How did you get back the violin soul of your soldier friend, which the devil won in a card game? The bow inexorably saws the strings, like a mad tightrope dancer. Delirium! Wind players cackle like chickens; remember the Russian muzhik: Your first musical impression in childhood, he sat on a tree trunk producing indecent noises with his hands. Well, now he laughs from heaven — dancing with Bach. Fools, find me a balalaika in New York!

Violin Concerto

Patricia Kopatchinskaya, violin; Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra; Andrés Orozco-Estrada, conductor

Stravinsky was a Russian. Yet in his 88 years he was also a Parisian, an Angeleno, a New Yorker. And his music has a similarly broad range — even within a specific form like ballet, in which his output includes the explosive “Rite of Spring,” the Neo-Classical “Apollo” and the serialist “Agon.” He was no mere chameleon, though. Listen to this movement from the “Symphony of Psalms”: It’s firmly Neo-Classical, an ingeniously crafted double fugue with vocal lines that layer in dense counterpoint and satisfying resolution. But even in recalling a much earlier period of music history, Stravinsky’s sound is, as always, utterly distinctive, and distinctly modern.

“Symphony of Psalms”

London Symphony Orchestra and Monteverdi Choir; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)

The “Suite Italienne” is a collection of themes from Stravinsky’s ballet “Pulcinella,” which was inspired in part by Italian Baroque music. While the “Suite Italienne” may at first seem deceptively traditional, the composer’s irreverent streak shines through. In this recording of its final movement by the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (who collaborated with Stravinsky on the arrangement) and the violinist Jascha Heifetz, the music is at first stately and restrained, before culminating in euphoric fanfare.

“Suite Italienne”

Jascha Heifetz, violin; Gregor Piatigorsky, cello (Sony)

The piano transcription of “Petrushka” represents a sort of Everest for a pianist. Not only does it require enormous challenges in terms of virtuosity, but it also demands a whole world of colorful dances and folklore from the hands of a single musician. When I started learning it, I thought the orchestral score would be my main inspiration, but one day I found an excerpt from Nureyev dancing Petrushka; never before had I understood so well the musical portrait of this puppet becoming human. These five minutes tell in the most touching way the timeless tragedy of the human spirit.

Three Movements From “Petrushka”

Beatrice Rana, piano (Warner)

Soaring lyricism might not be the most representative aspect of Stravinsky’s music, though he had his moments. But there’s something bewitching about the end of his Neo-Classical ballet “Apollon Musagète,” which he finished in 1928. Scored for strings, shards of his characteristic edge glint in the sound, but this is music that seems to float high in the clouds, troubled but free, up there with the gods. There are days when I can fly with it for hours, never mind five minutes.

“Apollon Musagète”: Apotheosis

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor (Decca)

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