Stravinsky

L'Histoire du soldat
The Fable of the Fox, the Cock, the Tomcat and the Ram
Burlesques in song and dance
with the participation of the Demmeni Puppet Theatre

Artistes of the Demmeni Marionette Theatre:
Arkady Mirohin, Anna Mironova,
Irina Krivchionok, Olga Fyodorova
Narrator – Yuri Dormidontov

Musical Director: Valery Gergiev
Conductor: Mikhail Tatarnikov
Stage Director: Eduard Gayday
Set Designer: Alexander Alexeyev
Lighting Designer: Kamil Kutyev

Premiere of this production: 7 February 2010

The Fable of the Fox... with the subheading “a merry performance with singing and dancing” is a one-act amusement in “cheap print” Russian style in which Stravinsky once again turns to the traditions of jesters’ “laughing” theatre. The subject of Russian tales from Afanasiev’s folkloric collection, where the instructive story of human weaknesses takes on the form of an allegorical menagerie of beasts, gave the composer a mass of ways to instrument his extremely witty musical discoveries, as a result of which was the creation of one of the best comic masterpieces of the 20^th century. The story of a fleeing soldier who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for a miraculous violin and a magic book is borrowed from the same collection.
Nadezhda Kulygina

Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
The Piano Concerto occupies a special place in the composer’s legacy – it turned a new page in Stravinsky’s creative and performing career. His first work written in the concerto genre, it was also the first opus where Stravinsky appeared before an audience as a soloist. The incredibly bold and anti-romantic character of the idea of the concerto presupposed a predominantly “percussive” treatment of the piano and the wind instruments (moreover, double basses and percussion instruments feature in the score). Such an unusual ensemble provided the composer with an ideal model for the interaction between the timbres: according to a remark made by Stravinsky, in contrast with the percussion solo, the wind section prolonged the sound of the piano and created an effect akin to human breathing. Calling on the lofty traditions of the baroque era, the composer combined techniques of Bach and Handel with sharp differences in pitch that sound truly “à la Stravinsky” and results in a completely original composition, which stands out for its genre and stylistically diverse semantics.
Nadezhda Kulygina