The first edition of Stravinsky s Complete works ever. Comprising
Stage Works (Ballets, Operas, Oratorio), Orchestral, Choral, Solo
Vocal, Chamber, Piano, Historical s.
Performed by an array of great Stravinsky interpreters including
Abbado, Ashkenazy, Bernstein, Bostridge, Boulez, Chailly, Craft,
Gardiner, Knussen, the Labèques, Langridge, Levine, Maisky,
Mustonen, Mutter, Nagano, Pletnev, Pollini, Sacher, Shelton,
Terfel.
Plus....Stravinsky himself, conducting a 1935 of his
Violin Concerto.
Bonus CD: Argerich and Barenboim dazzle with The Rite of Spring
New s of four delightful miniatures (vocal / piano)
150-page booklet (English, French, German) with Foreword by Roger
Wright.
Synopses of operas and ballets available as a download.
CD 1 12 Stage Works
Here you get all the famous ballets, from Firebird, Petrushka and
The Rite of Spring (all Boulez s), through Pulcinella
(Abbado) Apollon musagète (Chailly) to Agon, the operas from The
Nightingale (Boulez) to The Rake s Progress (Gardiner) and
idiosyncratically Stravinskian works like Renard (Chailly), Les
Noces (Bernstein) and Mavra (Rozhdestvensky) as well as Oedipus
Rex (Philip Langridge under James Levine), and rarities like
Persephone and Orpheus
CD 13 18 Orchestral Music
Starting with the almost traditional Symphony no. 1 in E flat
(Pletnev), these six CDs bear witness to Stravinsky s incredible
stylistic transformation with a rich array of neo-classical works
(3 CDs) including the Symphony in C and the Symphony in 3
Movements, delightful miniatures like the two Suites for small
orchestra, the concertante works for piano and violin, the jazzy
Ebony Concerto and Tango, the hilarious Greeting Prelude written
for Pierre Monteux s 80th birthday you ve never heard Happy
Birthday to You like this before and the ascetic later works.
Rounded off by revised versions (Suites) from Firebird and
Petrushka.
CD 19 21 Choral Music
Three CDs of choral music comprising famous works like the
Symphony of Psalms (Gardiner) and Mass (Bernstein), but also many
rarities: short Russian sacred works, Babel, Threni (Robert
Craft), A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (Robert Craft) that
repay closer listening.
CD 22 23 Solo Vocal
A fascinating sequence of songs (with Lucy Shelton and John
Constable) from Stravinsky s earliest period, many presented in
the original voice and piano versions as well as later
arrangements for voice and chamber ensemble (soloists like Ann
Murray and John Shirley-Quirk under Pierre Boulez), ending with
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat from 1966.
This section also includes what may be a world-premiere
of the short Hommage à Nadia Boulanger, written for her 70th
birthday in 1947, sung by two American singers from the Deutsche
Oper Berlin, Heide Stober and Ronnita Millar.
CD 24 25 Chamber Music
Beside original chamber works the great Octet and Septet, for
example there are many popular works arranged from ballets that
are regularly played in concert: the Suite italienne (in the
cello and piano version, with Maisky and Argerich), The Soldier s
Tale Concert Suite and the Divertimento from The Fairy s Kiss.
CD 26 27 Piano Music
Here, alongside Maurizio Pollini s unrivalled account of the
Three Movements from Petrushka , we have excellent performances
of neo-classical works like the Sonata and the Serenade in A by
the French pianist Marie-Francoise Bucquet.
CD 28 29 Historical s
The Violin Concerto with Dushkin and Stravinsky mentioned above,
and The Soldier s Tale with Jean Cocteau as Narrator conducted by
Igor Markevitch; plus two classic accounts of early ballets from
Ansermet and Monteux.
CD 30 Bonus
Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim making sparks fly in the
pian duet arrangement of The Rite of Spring.
Review
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I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of
rhythm offer me rtunities that all of human genius will never
exhaust --Igor Stravinsky