Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky's music cracks open rhythm and colour: pagan rite and puppet theatre, Russian folk bite and cool neoclassical poise. From The Rite of Spring to Petrouchka and The Firebird, the writing still startles the ear.
His ballet scores for the Ballets Russes redefined what theatre music could do. The Rite of Spring, first composed for piano four hands, thrives on stacked pulses and raw drive even stripped of the orchestra: fiery staccato, primitive rhythmic force that never lets go. Petrouchka keeps the fairground swagger and the puppet's brittle edge in its piano transcriptions. Elsewhere the voice softens. The Firebird berceuse rocks with quiet glow, while Chanson Russe carries eccentric folk colour for cello or violin. Later he turned toward Pergolesi and classical forms, polishing dance into clean, witty neoclassical line. Whether the surface is savage or courtly, the music is built for the body as much as the mind.
Compositions by Igor Stravinsky appear on
The Other Side of Tony Gould
Tony Gould is best known as a jazz pianist and improviser. This recording turns to his classical side: original concert works written over two decades, with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in a four-hand piano version.
Russian Cello
Enter the world of Russia. Zoe Knighton and Amir Farid present unknown works alongside much-loved classics. The recording celebrates a romanticism in composition inspired by the combination of cello and piano.
Tensile Flame
Michael Kieran Harvey’s two-disc piano programme pairs Liszt’s B minor Sonata and its early twentieth-century echoes in Skryabin, Rachmaninov and Ravel with a second disc of Stravinsky, Carter, Graham Hair and Carl Vine’s 1990 Piano Sonata.
Mistika
Composer and keyboardist Linda Ceff sets past and present inspirations beside her own contemporary works. Homages to Stravinsky, Messiaen and Skryabin sit with multi-tracked piano, synthesised colour, bells and Asian-inflected writing.
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (piano four hands)
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was first composed in 1913 for piano four hands, eight years before the orchestral score was published. Ronald Farren-Price and Rosslyn Farren-Price give an intense, highly rhythmic performance of the Rite, set against Ravel's melodic Mother Goose Suite, also originally written for piano four hands.
Kevin Kanisius Suherman presents Schimmel Konzert 219
Kevin Kanisius Suherman presents the new Schimmel Konzert 219 concert grand in a recital that sets Romantic and early twentieth-century piano works beside his own arrangements of Indonesian song.