3 Minutes of Awesome! Neoclassic Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky is best known for his epic ballet, The Rite of Spring, which was so revolutionary that it caused a riot at its premiere, 100 years ago this spring. And while I love his ballets and his large orchestra music, I'm most fond of his neoclassic chamber works, like his Octet and the piece I'm featuring today, The Soldier's Tale, or as it's more commonly known, L'Histoire du soldat.

Stravinsky wrote L'Histoire in 1918 for a small chamber ensemble with narrator. It tells the story of a Russian soldier who makes a deal with the devil over his violin. It's pretty complicated, but it involves typical themes of love, loss, and greed. The piece, however, is quite often played without the narration as a separate suite. This is how I first encountered it. Since the work involves a great deal of mixed meter, it makes a challenging test piece for directors. In our advanced conducting course at Northwestern, we had to direct it while our professor, Mr. Paynter, sat in the back and graded us. And as if that wasn't enough to make us nervous, he gave the performers little slips of paper with mistakes they were to play on purpose to see if we could hear the errors.

Here's an Israeli ensemble performing the "Royal March" movement.

Here's the full work, as played by members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Jarvi.