7 minute read
THOUGHTS ON MUSIC
In this regular feature, music critic Rupert Christiansen talks about the pieces of classical music that he loves.
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Link the word ballet to the name of Stravinsky and I imagine your mind will turn to the three great works that he wrote for Diaghilev before the First World War: The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, all of which now form an integral part of the standard repertory.
Yet their popularity has unfairly overshadowed other ballet music that Stravinsky would compose over the next forty-odd years. What a catalogue it is: Apollo musagetes, Jeu de cartes, Orpheus, and Agon, choreographed by George Balanchine; Scènes de Ballet, choreographed by Frederick Ashton; the choral Les Noces and Renard, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska. And there’s more too, all of it rhythmically dynamic and boldly orchestrated.
A special case is Le Baiser de la fée, “The Fairy’s Kiss”. The longest ballet Stravinsky ever wrote (with a duration of three quarters of an hour, it’s about ten minutes longer than The Rite of Spring), it’s based on Hans Christian Andersen’s folk-tale The Snow Queen and the idea of a magic kiss that turns out to be a curse. The idea was Stravinsky’s own, but the commission for the score came from Ida Rubinstein, the fabulously wealthy Russian dancer and mime, for a company that she had formed in Paris. Rubinstein was Diaghilev’s deadly rival, and his rage at what he saw as Stravinsky’s betrayal brought the two men’s long friendship to a sad end. That the ballet proved an embarrassing flop at its première in 1928 gave Diaghilev grim satisfaction.
Stravinsky completed the score in a hurry, and later admitted that he should have made revisions. Nevertheless it has enormous charm as a quilt of piano pieces by Tchaikovsky orchestrated by Stravinsky and patched with linking passages that were his own invention. This was a mode of composition which Stravinsky had previously adopted for the ballet Pulcinella, where he drew on Pergolesi’s music, and it creates a marvellously seamless sense of dialogue between old and new.
Rich in melody and glowing in colour, Le Baiser de la fée is a delicious confection, without the acerbic edge that still puts cautious listeners off The Rite of Spring or Agon. All it lacks is a thrilling climax, which is perhaps why the many choreographers attracted to the score – Ashton, Balanchine and Nijinska among many others – have so far failed to turn it into a successful piece of dance drama.
But it’s lovely music for the car, or as background to household activities. Call it easy listening, if you like, there’s no shame in that! May I warmly recommend the lovely recording (appropriately combined with Pulcinella) on the bargain Naxos label, conducted by Stravinsky’s amanuensis Robert Craft?
Rupert Christiansen
Rupert Christiansenwas opera and music critic and arts columnist for TheDaily Telegraph from 1995 to 2021. He teaches at Keble College, Oxford and is the author of many books of cultural history.
Kaori Nakamura and Jordan Porretta in Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée
Max Baillie on Versatility
One day at morning meeting when I was a student at YMS the then Music Director, Malcolm Singer, played us a track from Yehudi Menuhin’s 1967 album with Ravi Shankar, West Meets East. I’d never heard it before and remember being entranced by the unison sound of Yehudi’s violin matching Ravi’s bending sitar notes, and the enigmatic violin cadenza that follows, all in anticipation of the explosive entry of the tabla drums.
I wonder whether Yehudi and Ravi imagined that this record would be part of a long legacy of cross-cultural recording collaborations, and that in 2022 it would so closely reflect our present-day interest in looking for links between different musics? Along with jazz and classical Indian music, Yehudi was fascinated by the folk traditions of Eastern Europe, and including the 3rd Enescu violin sonata alongside music with Ravi on that album was not only highly unusual but an invitation for the listener to hear the links between similar modes, and the intersection of form with improvisatory freedom.
By the time I went to YMS at A Level I had already spent a few years playing in a jazz band. I even toured South Africa in 1996 when I was 15, playing in jazz clubs all across the country. One night we stayed at a homestay in Soweto township, just outside Johannesburg, and I remember arriving at a community leader’s house and waiting for my host to collect me and a couple of my bandmates. We were on a gentle hill overlooking the vast shantytown below, where bare electric light bulbs lit up the dusty pathways, and fires burned in steel barrels across the horizon. The St Matthew’s Passion played from his stereo, and I’ll never forget that unexpected convergence of place and culture. I felt so inspired in that moment; that I could be led to something so familiar on the other side of the globe and yet also hear it transformed: blending with the sound of dogs barking and crickets chirping and the unfamiliar atmosphere of a far-away place.
My love of improvisation has always led me to explore and look for creative adventure. It’s also been a gateway to re-discovering music that I know and love. My group Lodestar Trio is a collaboration with two amazing Scandinavian folk musicians and we play Bach and other baroque music in the spirit of a folk-fiddle band. My other group is the quintet ZRI, based on the idea of the Viennese tavern Zum Roten Igel where Brahms and Schubert heard folk and Hungarian musicians play, and were influenced by that music. I do some guest-leading, play regularly at chamber music festivals, play on film and television soundtracks, on pop records and occasionally in solo concerts, and I run my own concert series in my hometown of St Leonard’s in East Sussex. I also have an experimental electronic duo called Sonnen, which is largely improvised and is a creative zone where I get to make up all the rules myself.
Everyone knows that it’s a challenge to make a career in music: we need to find a way to be fulfilled creatively and also to sustain ourselves financially at a time when the pressure is greater than it ever used to be. I’ve found that being versatile is a way to make meeting both these challenges easier. I’ve always preferred a freelance, selfled career over applying for a fixed position. It gives me flexibility and variation, which I like. But even if you stick to what we think of as classical music, this can include styles spanning four centuries from Gesualdo to Adès. So this already requires great flexibility and a huge range of intersecting sets of playing technique.
When I left YMS in 2001 I didn’t feel much connection to Menuhin’s legacy as I went to do a philosophy degree at Cambridge and set the violin aside for a while. But later, when I had re-connected with the violin, I was fortunate to find a mentor in Ivry Gitlis, who like Yehudi was a student of Enescu. My own projects revolve around the kind of crosspollination of styles explored in West Meets East, and I even worked with Ravi’s daughter Anoushka Shankar, recording on her album a few years ago.
If I were to offer any advice to young musicians entering the profession I would say: stay curious! This is the best guide for learning, and will expand you as a musician in ways that will be stimulating and that will open up pathways where you can find work to sustain you. Yehudi himself maintained this quality right through his life, and was also interested in by new innovations (he even had an electric car in 1996!). Curiosity will lead you to make discoveries about the way you play your instrument and the way you make music, and that will make the most compelling listening for anyone hearing you.
Max Baillie Max Baillie is equally at home on both violin and viola and his musical life embraces a unique mix of classical, improvisation, contemporary and experimental music.
A graduate of YMS and Berlin’s UdK,
Max has performed at the Festival du Desert in the depths of the Malian
Sahara, duetted with Bobby McFerrin in
New York, and led Bjork’s string orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall.
