Two of the major works from the first phase of Stravinsky’s neoclassical period dominate this collection. The Apollo ballet, first performed in 1928, is the earlier; the Violin Concerto, the first in a series of works that Stravinsky composed for the US soloist Samuel Dushkin, appeared three years later. They contrast well; the long-limbed string lines of Apollon Musagète, one of Stravinsky’s most lyrical scores, seem musical worlds away from the insistent propulsion of the wind-dominated orchestral writing in the concerto. It’s easy enough for Andrew Davis to make the distinction between the two sound worlds very clear, and though James Ehnes’s shaping of the solo writing in the concerto is perhaps more expressively expansive than the conductor’s approach, especially in the two aria movements at the core of the work, their musical differences hardly jar.
The rest of this collection is made up of smaller-scale works from the same period, offcuts, almost, from the main creative block – the two Suites for small orchestra from the early 1920s, both made up of orchestrations of pieces originally composed for piano duet, and the 1945 Scherzo à la Russe, the orchestral version of a piece originally composed for Paul Whiteman’s jazz band, but which sometimes seems to echo the world of Petrushka from more than 30 years earlier. None of them is a really significant work in Stravinsky’s output, but Davis ensures that they are all performed with the same attention to detail and stylishness that he gives to the concerto and the ballet.
Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify
