On this date, 100 years ago, Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments” was given its first performance at Queen’s Hall, London, on a concert conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Written the previous year, and dedicated to the memory of Debussy, the chorale that concludes the piece was first published in the French magazine “La Revue musicale,” alongside memorial works by Ravel, Bartók, Falla, Dukas, Satie, and others. The issue was titled “Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy.”
However, the opening night audience found Stravinsky’s music anything but grave. They chortled inappropriately, and Koussevitzky glanced over his shoulder to share a conspiratorial grin. Even so, at the end of the performance, any cheekiness was obliterated by applause, as Stravinsky rose to take a bow.
The work is scored for 24 wind instruments. The term “symphonies” has nothing to do with symphonic form. Rather, Stravinsky employed the word for its broader, older connotation, from the Greek, of “sounding together.” He would reorchestrate the piece in 1947.
Three days prior to the Queen’s Hall jeers, Stravinsky had given Londoners something to cry about, as he attended the UK premiere, in the same venue, of the concert version of his riot-inducing ballet “The Rite of the Spring.”
It’s always refreshing to look back on a time when people were actually passionate about music.
“Symphonies of Wind Instruments”
Riot at “The Rite”
Stravinsky as rendered by Picasso in 1920