你好It’s amazing that music 90 plus years old can still create shock and awe, but Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring does. Listening to it, you can easily the indomitable Madame Stravinsky, Igor’s mother, refusing to hear it until some twenty-five years later. When she finally attended a concert, all she could manage to say was that she was sorry she couldn’t whistle. She was referring to the Rite’s Paris premiere in 1913 where the audience started pounding everything in sight, booing and whistling their disapproval.

According to Stravinsky, he had his “vision of a solemn pagan rite” in which a young girl was sacrificed to propitiate the god of Spring. Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario, seeing the potential for a ballet, urged him to work on it.

The whole set up (Stravinsky’s music, Roerich’s scenery and Nijinsky’s choreography) was so radical that a scandal was a slam dunk. Which was exactly what Diaghilev wanted to bolster ticket sales and bring needed publicity to his Ballets Russes . The famous fiasco of a première is usually attributed to Stravinsky's music, but in fact, although there was some grumbling during the introduction, the boos and catcalls didn’t start until the curtain rose and the dancers began their first spastic movements. In those days ballet and concert music were two completely different animals, and the Paris audience wasn’t going to stand for a combination.

The Rite had, and still has, a tremendous power to move people. Yet, there was nothing really new in the Rite. Stravinsky had used more than one key in Petrushka (introduced the year before). Irregular timings and syncopation were old news. Discord itself was also nothing to write home about - Strauss and Mahler had already done it - but Stravinsky’s violent in-your-face, throbbing blending of all them, pushing melody and harmony into the background, changed music forever.

The Rite is divided into two parts; the primitive, elemental Adoration of the Earth and the Sacrifice of the Virgin, at the end of which, she dances convulsively and then crashes to the ground, her blood fertilizing it for another season. Whether you love it, as I do, or loathe it, it’s impossible to be indifferent to this music. It’s awesome, compelling stuff.

What’s in my player: Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) – Kirov Orchestra – Valery Gergiev, Conductor

I’ve heard or owned other versions of this, Bernstein with the NY Philharmonic, Muti’s and Antal Dorati’s – even Stravinsky’s own , but none of them can compare with Gergiev’s. Instruments make sounds you’ve never dreamt they could make; they shriek, they moan, they shudder, and through it all that elemental rhythm pounds its way into your living room the way it never has for anyone else. Gergiev, in complete control like a master showman, makes none of it sound contrived, but intrinsically part of the drama of the piece.

At the shattering climax, when the exhausted Virgin falls to the earth and the orchestra collapses and shatters, your heart is in your throat. The (live) recording is top notch - a tremendous tour de force!

J. Mark Goldman

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