This brings back happy memories of my youth. Take my advice and don’t stuff one of your old action figures into a bean can with an M-80 too close to your parents’ car. Or drop it into your uncle’s fireworks-laden trunk. Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Tag: Fireworks
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Stravinsky’s Savage Wit Composer Feuds and Fireworks
I’m not sure Stravinsky ever had anything nice to say about anyone. I suppose when you’re lauded as the most important composer of the 20th century, you’ll do anything you can to hang on to the title. Also, a pithy putdown always makes for good copy.
It’s interesting then to come across so many images of Stravinsky with other composers. What was there that they could possibly talk about? Other than Stravinsky, I mean?
Perhaps it’s true that familiarity really does breed contempt. In the world of Igor Stravinsky, if you don’t have anything nice to say, say it!
“Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa-Lobos?”
On Rachmaninoff: “He was a six-and-a-half-foot scowl.”
On Boulez’s “Pli Selon Pli”: “Pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty.”
On Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “It’s a mistake to conclude each act with people going to sleep.”
On Messiaen’s “Turangalîla Symphony”: “Little more can be required to write such things than a plentiful supply of ink.”
On Handel’s “Theodora”: “It’s beautiful and boring. Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”
On Eugene Ormandy: “The perfect conductor of Strauss waltzes.”
In fairness, he sometimes got as good as he gave:
Ernest Newman on Stravinsky: “His music used to be original. Now it’s aboriginal.”
Britten on Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress”: “I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.”
Prokofiev on Stravinsky: “Bach on the wrong notes.”
At least two of Stravinsky’s works were first performed on this date:
In 1908, “Feu d’artifice” (“Fireworks”) was composed to celebrate the marriage of Nadezhda Rimsky-Korsakov, the daughter of his famed teacher, to rival composer-classmate Maximilian Steinberg, which must have been a bitter pill.
In 1957, “Agon” was given its first performance on a concert to celebrate Stravinsky’s 75th birthday. The first staged performance was held at the New York City Ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, later in the year, on December 1, 1957.
Happy birthday, Igor Stravinsky!
PHOTO GALLERY: Puppet master Ego Stravinsky and his marionette theater (each labeled individually)
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Stravinsky Birthday A Celebration in Spring
“Igor Stravinsky was born in the spring and died in the spring. In a sense, he lived his whole life in a springtime of creativity. All his music is spring-like, newly budding, rooted in the familiar past, yet fresh and sharp, with that stinging, paradoxical combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.”
On Stravinsky’s birthday, enjoy this brief appreciation, narrated by Leonard Bernstein, assembled not long after Stravinsky’s death:
I especially got a kick out of the cowboy reception, around the 9-minute mark.
Also on this date, in 1908, Stravinsky’s “Fireworks” was first performed, at the wedding of Rimsky-Korsakov’s daughter, Nadezhda, to Stravinsky’s professional rival, Maximillian Steinberg. The wedding took place a few days before Rimsky-Korsakov’s death. Stravinsky received the commission for his breakthrough ballet, “The Firebird,” in part because Serge Diaghilev heard the piece and was impressed with his orchestration.
Stravinsky conducts “Fireworks,” from his Russian nationalist period, in Japan:
Stravinsky, in his last public appearance, conducts his neoclassical masterpiece, “Pulcinella”:
Stravinsky conducts one of my favorite works from his serial period, “Agon”:
Stravinsky’s final masterpiece, “Requiem Canticles,” was first performed at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1966. Against expectations, Stravinsky again conducted. The performance is led here by his assistant, Robert Craft:
“Requiem Canticles” would be repeated at Stravinsky’s funeral five years later.
As a bonus, here’s an article I wrote on Stravinsky in Princeton for the Trenton Times in 2016:
https://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/2016/12/classical_music_puo_pugc_so_pe.html
Happy birthday, Igor Stravinsky, and happy anniversary, Maximillian and Nadezhda Steinberg (née Rimskaya-Korsakova)!
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