Hello,
It's been casually rumored that the young Stravinsky once met
Tchaikovsky, is this true? I don't think it is because Stravinsky was born
in 1882 and Tchaikovsky died in 1893, making him 11 years old at the time
of Tchaikovsky's untimely death. At this time, Stravinsky wasn't a famous
composer yet. Does anyone have any information on this?
Thanks,
Michael Svoboda
07/03/2009 08:39
Stravinsky's father, Fyodor, was a baritone with the Imperial Opera
company at the Mariinskii Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and he took part in
the premieres of several of Tchaikovsky's operas in the Russian capital,
and would have been personally acquainted with the composer. Young Igor
was apparently brought by his father to the premiere of the Pathëtique
symphony in Saint Petersburg in 1893, with Tchaikovsky conducting, and he
said many years afterwards that this had made a great impression on him.
But (from memory, which could be wrong), I don't think that Igor was ever
personally introduced to Tchaikovsky.
Hope this helps,
Brett Langston
Another incident that Stravinsky recalled is what I believe took place
in Tchaikovsky's last week of life...I believe during the intermission of
"A Life for the Tsar", young Stravinsky was with his mother when she
pointed out the famous composer to her son in the foyer...that image
stayed with Stravinsky throughout his life....he would have been eleven
then....
Albert Gasparo
Regarding the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky,
Stravinsky himself states in his "An Autobiography" 1936, the extent of
this encounter....he states that when he went to hear the fiftieth
anniversary performance of "Ruslan and Ludmilla" in which his father took
part he caught a glimpse of Tchaikovsky in the foyer.."whom I had never
seen before and never was to see again"....he had just conducted the first
performance of the "Pathetique"...this would place the incident in the
last week of Tchaikovsky's life....he continues..."a fortnight later my
mother took me to a concert where the same symphony was played in memory
of its composer, who had been suddenly carried off by cholera"....he says
also..it "would become one of my most treasured memories."....he would
have been 11 at the time.....that in sum is as far as it went....Albert
Gasparo
Albert Gasparo
Thank you Mr. Gasparo for that additional information. I can only
imagine how Stravinsky felt during that moments when he caught a glimpse
of the famous composer. Indeed I would give anything to relive moments
such as those, among others. It would be even better to have stumbled upon
a possible video recording of Tchaikovsky, but I'm sure that's not even
possible. Haha.
Thanks,
Michael Svoboda
09/05/2009 18:33
If you go to You Tube and look for ''Furtwangler conducts Stravinsky
Divertimento "Le Baiser de la fee" 1/4 " you will come upon the first part
of four videos of the Divertimento which is a concert suite based on the
ballet...it consists of Stravinsky's brilliant elaboration and
orchestrations of a group of Tchaikovsky's lesser known piano pieces and
songs ending with Stravinsky's version of ''None but the Lonely
Heart"....the ballet is rendered in as close to Tchaikovsky's style as
Stravinsky's talent allowed....Tchaikovsky was always one of Stravinsky's
favorite composers from that day in the last days of Tchaikovsky's life
when the young Stravinsky caught a sight of him in the foyer of the
Marinsky Theatre at the fiftieth anniversary of "Ruslan and
Ludmilla''..indeed on Stravinsky's death bed it was the "Pathetique" which
was played I believe at his own request at his wife's protest due to the
Russian belief that the Symphony signified death...
In 1927 Stravinsky was commissioned to write a ballet inspired by the
music of Tchaikovsky...as he says in his ''An Autobiography"...."My well
known fondness for the composer, and still more, the fact that November,
the time fixed for the performance, would mark the thirty-fifth
anniversary of his death, induced me to accept the offer. It would give me
an opportunity of paying my heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky's wonderful
talent."....
The subject and scenario of the ballet was based on Hans Christian
Anderson's story of ''The Ice Maiden"....it was meant to be an allegory on
Tchaikovsky's life...he too was branded by the muse's fatal kiss as was
the youth in the fairy tale....''and the magic imprint - of the muse's
kiss - has made itself felt in all the musical creations of this great
artist..."
For myself I remember that day in 1957 when Stravinsky conducted his
Persephone, Symphony of Psalms and Firebird with the NY Philharmonic at
Carnegie Hall commemorating his 75th birthday....the only time I ever saw
him live....
Best Wishes,
AL Gasparo
12/11/2011 20:42
Here is more on Stravinsky's tribute to Tchaikovsky, The Fairy's
Kiss...its origins and scenario...program notes originally written by
Thomas May for a performance of the piece at The Kennedy Center...
''One of the most interesting masks Stravinsky chose during his
French years between the wars as he toyed with musical idioms from the
past was that of Tchaikovsky. Late into his life, he treasured his
memory, as a boy, of catching a glimpse of the great man at a
performance in St. Petersburg, just weeks before his death. For all his
mockery of romantic sentiment, Stravinsky maintained a deeply abiding
affection for Tchaikovsky from those earliest years in Russia. (Anxious
to dissolve the paradox, some critics have, however, insisted on
decoding his attitude as just another instance of Stravinskian irony.)
That affection is the basis for the ballet Stravinsky composed
immediately following the premiere of his landmark 1928 ballet Apollo
(commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of
Congress). Ida Rubinstein, the legendary fellow Russian who had long
been a sensation in the Paris artistic scene as a dancer, muse, and
patroness, was branching out from Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with her
own ballet company and wanted a new composition by Stravinsky. Among her
commissions for its inaugural 1928 season—which also included Ravel's
Boléro—was the idea of an homage marking the 35th anniversary of
Tchaikovsky's death in November of that year.
Stravinsky approached the project as a chance to channel Tchaikovsky,
producing a fascinating new amalgam from material written by the latter.
Years before, he had orchestrated a couple of sections Tchaikovsky cut
before the premiere of Sleeping Beauty to use in Diaghilev's revival of
the work. In this case, however, Stravinsky decided to draw from a wide
variety of miniatures outside the domain of ballet—chiefly piano pieces
and songs—and recombined them into a shimmering, brand-new orchestral
fabric. He even chose a suitably Tchaikovskian scenario by adapting Hans
Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Ice Maiden—thus creating a synthetic
"Tchaikovsky ballet" that Tchaikovsky never wrote.
The result, titled Le Baiser de la Fée ("The Fairy's Kiss"), mixes
fragments from Tchaikovsky with Stravinskian feints so persuasively that
the composer later observed he lost track of what belonged to whom. The
story revolves around an ill-fated mortal whom the fairy's minions steal
from his mother as a baby. The fairy bestows her kiss on him and returns
in disguise when he is celebrating his engagement to his fiancée at a
village fête. There she tricks the young man into declaring his love for
her and then spirits him away to her realm "beyond time and place,"
kissing him once again "to the sound of her lullaby." Stravinsky
dedicated his score to "the memory of Pyotr Tchaikovsky" and suggested
an allegorical correlation "between his muse and this fairy." Like the
fairy, "his muse similarly marked him with a fatal kiss, whose
mysterious imprint manifests itself in every work of this great artist."
Several years after the ballet's premiere (it was later revised in
1950 for a new Balanchine production), Stravinsky reclaimed some of the
music in an arrangement for piano and violin intended for Dushkin, which
he called Divertimento. Similarly, in 1934 he prepared this concert
suite of the same name, comprising about half of the music from the
original four-scene ballet. Sinfonia is taken from the opening scene and
depicts the mother lost with her child in the storm. The sprites steal
him away in music meshing dramatic melodies with Stravinsky's rhythmic
acuity.
The echoing horns, rambunctious trombones, and rustic touches of
Danses Suisses fast forward us to the young man's engagement party in
the second scene, where touches of Petroushka liven the festivity. In
the Scherzo, the fairy (disguised as a gypsy) has guided the young man
to the mill where his beloved is with her friends playing cards.
Tchaikovsky's shadow stimulates an especially intriguing ventriloquism
in the Pas de deux sequence from scene three as the lovers dance—perhaps
the ballet's most transparently beautiful passage. Stravinsky scores at
first for a warm combination of clarinet, harp, and solo cello, which
then swells with emotion before leading into a delectable duet for
flutes. The music speeds up for a coda, heralded by the timpani, that
brings the dance to a peremptory close with knife-edged chords.''
Best Wishes,
AL Gasparo
13/11/2011 17:04