Thursday 4 June
Stravinsky
The Soldier's Tale
We hope that you enjoy this broadcast from our archives, recorded at LSO St Luke's in October 2015.
Tonight's programme:
Stravinsky The Soldier’s Tale
Roman Simovic director
Malcolm Sinclair narrator
LSO Chamber Ensemble:
Andrew Marriner clarinet
Rachel Gough bassoon
Philip Cobb trumpet
Dudley Bright trombone
Neil Percy percussion
Edicson Ruiz double bass
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Igor Stravinsky
The Soldier’s Tale
1918
PART I
PART II
The Soldier’s Tale was first performed in Lausanne in September 1918 – the year of its composition – in what was intended as the first of a run of performances in Swiss towns, but was in fact also the last, thanks to the epidemic of Spanish flu which swept through Europe just as the war was coming to an end. As a theatre piece, it is one of Stravinsky’s great hybrid conceptions: ‘Soldier’s Tale – read, played and danced’ is how the title-page of the score describes it. Between, or along with, the musical numbers, a Narrator tells the story of the soldier home on leave who unwisely sells his violin, alias his soul, to an old man with a butterfly net in return for a book of tomorrow’s stock-market prices. In the original conception, three dancers mime, and occasionally speak, the parts of the soldier, the old man (really, of course, the Devil), and the sick princess, whom the soldier cures with his violin and marries. Tonight’s performance manages without the staging, and the narrator will speak the various different parts.
The music, like C F Ramuz’s treatment of the story, is less purely ‘Russian’ than Stravinsky’s earlier stage-works, though the source is a group of Russian folk-tales taken from the 19th-century collection of Alexander Afanasyev. During the war the composer had written a series of ‘easy pieces’ for piano duet, modelled on universal stereotypes – waltz, march, polka – and he had recently finished a short ensemble piece called Ragtime. Such stylisations proved useful in The Soldier’s Tale. For instance, the sick princess, a foreigner after all, gets better to a sultry tango, an elegant waltz and a jazzy ragtime. None of this is yet neo-Classicism, though it is moving that way. No single Stravinsky work better expresses the essential unity of his thinking amid a multitude of styles and media.
The unusual scoring (violin, double-bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone and percussion) was in part designed to cope with the stringencies of wartime, when orchestras were severely depleted by the absence of players on active service, and of course by death and injury. But this is no more than half an explanation. Stravinsky had already begun to prefer small, hybrid instrumental groupings even before the war, reacting to some extent against the huge, noisy orchestra and violent apparatus of The Rite of Spring (1913). As a matter of fact Ramuz’s original idea had been to have the narration accompanied by nothing but a solo violin, but Stravinsky had chafed at the limitation and had gradually expanded the little orchestra, finally acquiring a percussion set of his own and composing ‘at’ it, very much as he usually composed at the piano. It remains true, though, that he was inspired by the austerity of the ensemble, and the brilliance and variety of the solo writing is not the least astonishing feature of this unique masterpiece.
Note by Stephen Walsh Stephen Walsh is a well-known writer on music, the author of a major two-volume biography of Stravinsky and also a book on his music. He holds a personal chair at Cardiff University.
The Soldier's Tale, Part I:
Introduction. The Soldier's March
Introduction. Soldier and fiddle
Music for Scene 1. Airs by a Stream
Music for Scene 1. The Devil enters
Music for Scene 1. The Soldier's March (Reprise)
Music for Scene 1. The Soldier returns to his homeland
Music for Scene 2. Pastorale
Music for Scene 2. The Soldier confronts The Devil
Music for Scene 2. Little Pastorale
Music for Scene 2. The Soldier exploits the Book, but quickly recognises his foolishness
Music for Scene 2. Airs by a Stream (Reprise): The Soldier remembers
Music for Scene 2. The Soldier regains his violin
Music for Scene 3. Little Airs by a Stream (Reprise)
The Soldier's Tale, Part II:
The Soldier's March (Reprise)
The Soldier travels to a distant land
The Royal March
The Soldier visits the King
The Soldier plays cards with The Devil
The Little Concert
Three Dances - I. Tango
Three Dances - II. Waltz
Three Dances - III. Ragtime
The Devil's Dance
Little Chorale
The Devil's Song
Great Chorale
Triumphal March of the Devil
PURCHASE THE SOLDIER'S TALE ON LSO LIVE
The Soldier's Tale performed by the LSO Chamber Ensemble, directed by Roman Simovic and featuring Malcom Sinclair
The Soldier's Tale performed by the LSO Chamber Ensemble, directed by Roman Simovic and featuring Malcom Sinclair
Igor Stravinsky
1882–1971
Third in a family of four sons, Igor Stravinsky had a comfortable upbringing in St Petersburg, where his father was Principal Bass at the Mariinsky Theatre.
In 1902 he started lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov, but he was a slow developer, and hardly a safe bet when Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes commissioned The Firebird in 1909. The success of that work encouraged him to remain in western Europe, writing scores almost annually for Diaghilev.
The October Revolution of 1917 sealed him off from his homeland; his response was to create a rural Russia of the mind, in such works as the peasant-wedding ballet Les Noces (1914–23). Before that was completed, a ballet based on 18th-century music, Pulcinella (1919–20), opened the door to a whole neo-Classical period, which was to last three decades and more. He also began spending much of his time in Paris and on tour with his mistress Vera Sudeikina, while his wife, mother and children lived elsewhere in France.
Up to the end of the 1920s, his big works were nearly all for the theatre (including the nine he wrote for Diaghilev). By contrast, large-scale abstract works began to dominate his output after 1930, including three symphonies, of which the first, Symphony of Psalms (1930), marks also his reawakened religious observance.
In 1939, soon after the deaths of his wife and mother, he sailed to New York with Vera, whom he married, and with whom he settled in Los Angeles. Following his opera The Rake’s Progress (1947–51) he began to interest himself in Schoenberg and Webern, and within three years had worked out a new serial style. Sacred works became more and more important, to end with Requiem Canticles (1965–66), which was performed at his funeral, in Venice in 1971.
Profile by Paul Griffiths Paul Griffiths has been a critic for nearly 40 years, including for The Times and The New Yorker, and is an authority on 20th and 21st-century music. Among his books are studies of Boulez, Ligeti and Stravinsky. He also writes novels and librettos.
Roman Simovic
director
Roman Simovic's virtuosity and musicality, fuelled by a limitless imagination, have taken him around the world, performing on many of the world's leading stages, from the Bolshoi Hall of the Moscow Conservatory to the Barbican Hall in London.
Roman Simovic has been awarded prizes at numerous international competitions, including the Premio Rodolfo Lipizer (Italy), Sion Valais (Switzerland), Yampolsky Violin Competition (Russia) and the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition (Poland), placing him among the foremost violinists of his generation.
As a soloist, Simovic has appeared with the world's leading orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra, Teatro Regio Torino, Symphony Nova Scotia (Canada), Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (Hungary), Camerata Bern (Switzerland), Camerata Salzburg (Austria), CRR Chamber Orchestra (Turkey), Poznan Philharmonia, Prague Philharmonia, North Brabant (Holland), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Reggio della Toscana. He has worked with such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Sir Antonio Pappano, Daniel Harding, Gianandrea Noseda, Pablo Heras-Casado, Nikolai Szeps-Znaider, Sir Mark Elder and John Wilson.
A sought-after artist, Roman Simovic has been invited and continues to perform at various distinguished festivals such as the Verbier Festival, White Nights Festival in St Petersburg, Easter Festival in Moscow, Dubrovnik Summer Festival in Croatia, KotorArt Montenegro, the BEMUS and NOMUS Festivals in Serbia, Sion Valais Switzerland, Norway's Bergen Festival, Moscow Winter Festival, Portogruaro Festival in Italy and Granada Music Festival in Spain, collaborating with such renowned artists as Leonidas Kavakos, Evgeny Kissin, Yuja Wang, Antoine Tamestit, Mischa Maisky, Shlomo Mintz, François Leleux, Itamar Golan, Simon Trpčeski, Janine Jansen and Julian Rachlin.
As an educator, he has presented masterclasses in the US, UK, South Korea, Serbia, Montenegro, Israel and Italy. Roman Simovic plays a 1709 Antonio Stradivari violin which was generously given to him on loan from Jonathan Moulds. Simovic is currently Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Malcolm Sinclair
narrator
Malcolm trained at Hull University and the Bristol Old Vic School, and has worked steadily since. His career began in the major UK regional theatres, his parts including Hamlet, Benedick, Peer Gynt and much else. At the Royal Shakespeare Company he has played Horatio and Buckingham; at the National Theatre he originated roles in David Hare's Racing Demon and The Power of Yes, starred in Alan Bennett's Habit of Art as Benjamin Britten, and won the Clarence Derwent Award for his performance in House/Garden written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn. At the Donmar Warehouse he was nominated for an Olivier for Privates on Parade. In the West End he has appeared in My Fair Lady, By Jeeves, Journey's End, What the Butler Saw, Cressida, Hay Fever and Ivanov.
On television his appearances include Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War, Poirot, Judge John Deed and much else. He played Freddie Fisher in five series of Pie in the Sky. He has also been seen in Parade's End, Henry V and Silk.
His films include Casino Royale and V for Vendetta.
For the Boston Symphony he performed Shakespeare to Mendelssohn's music to A Midsummer Night's Dream under Seiji Ozawa, and Schoenberg's A Survivor in Warsaw under Mariss Jansons, which he repeated with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall. He has performed Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale for the BBC under Thomas Adès at St John's Smith Square, and with the Nash Ensemble under Lionel Friend for the Istanbul Festival. In Liverpool he was the Orator in Bliss' Morning Heroes under Vernon Handley. He has performed a programme of the work of Ivor Gurney with Jan Carey and Ian and Jennifer Partridge and has read the letters of Janáček in a programme with Sheffield's Ensemble 360, which includes the composer's Intimate Letters quartet.
He was President of British Equity, the trade union for performers, from 2010–18.
Malcolm was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2019 Olivier Awards for his performance in Pressure at The Ambassador's Theatre.
LSO Chamber Ensemble on stage
Andrew Marriner LSO Principal Clarinet 1986–2019
Rachel Gough LSO Principal Bassoon
Philip Cobb LSO Principal Trumpet
Dudley Bright LSO Principal Trombone 2001–18
Neil Percy LSO Principal Percussion
Edicson Ruiz double bass
LSO Chamber Ensemble on LSO Live
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Join us for our next full-length concert:
Sunday 7 June 2020, 3pm BST
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