tetr griton should we begin with today let's try some stravinski neoclassical period what were the different periods of Stravinsky so Stravinsky is always experimenting with new ideas his teacher was rimsky corov who wrote Jerad we can listen to a bit of that later rimsky corov was very ornamented very you could say classical trying to create a sound of Glamour
writing operas he was in a sense trying to make Russian music more like European music I don't think this Enterprise ever succeeded was he the first Russian composer to try to sound European well you could say glinka which is more or less the 1840s is the first Russian composer to create a Russian classical music and he wrote two well-known operas
and many other pieces and he was trying to bring Russian music into his own and he is the F from which a lot of later Russian music comes glena he's not listened to that much anymore but it's actually pretty good rimsky corov we still listen to shaherazad and Flight of the Bumblebee that's a very famous piece let's hear some rimsky corov okay here's
Fritz Riner with the Chicago Symphony he created very nice recorded sounds [Music] [Music] is he very ornamented very Lush [Music] [Music] that's very commanding very dramatic right just beautiful flat outright wonderful it sounds like the kind of sounds you'd hear in Hollywood movies maybe from the late 40s or 1950s and they drew on rinsky corov explicitly you
can hear it absolutely now there's another major strand in Russian music in the mid to late 19th century and that's mazori so he's drawing upon folk songs and he was considered a kind of untutored Barbarian mazori so rimsky it's all very perfectly in place wonderfully played uh when misorski put his music out people hated it in fact rimsky corov
took one of moorski's pieces and reorchestrated it so it would sound correct he ruined it in my opinion we can listen to that in a moment but you can think of Stravinsky as having his teacher rimsky who taught him how to actually orchestrate which he did learn and then misorski who's luring him toward the Russian folk Traditions so we're here in Italy of course there's a
long-standing Italian tradition of music from the cities were they both from the same place in Russia I don't think so but I couldn't tell you off hand Stravinsky is from near St Petersburg a lot of Russian music was more likely to be from St Petersburg than from Moscow so Stravinsky is longing for the folk tradition and unlike Germany Italy
which had these well-developed Urban musics for centuries Russia never quite had that because its cities were immature so the folk tradition was always the lure sort of luring each and every Russian composer into doing things that were weird and then at the same time you have a lot of the Russian composers worried that they're status was inferior to that of Europe and being
schizophrenic as to whether they should embrace that difference or somehow try to overcome it and fight back and that's another lens through which you can understand Stravinsky that he's trying to integrate all the different Traditions into the life of one composer so to speak let's see if we can hear a good misorski song and that recording of the
shaherazad even though it's from 1956 it still sounds wonderful it's before all orchestras started sounding the same have you ever been to hear classical music in Russia yeah fantastic how is the experience going from country to Country hearing the music made in that country in the orchestral setting in Russia just the quality of performers you've never heard of is through the
ceiling my favorite place to hear music would be Germany and Berlin just the discipline imposed the quality of the audience but basically St Petersburg Moscow Berlin Vienna would be the greatest of musical cities to hear live music Vienna is a bit more ruined by tourist demand there's a lot of Mozart and 60 Minute sort of concerts in the
churches oh let's see which one of these mazori songs shall we try let's see how the Cradle song will do for n the nursery [Music] [Applause] g go go go go go go go g g g [Music] fore [Music] foree for [Music] speee foree [Music] speee [Music] fore fore [Music] fore [Music] is that typical of mazori yes irregular rhythms playful playful perverse never delivering quite the
pleasing moment confusing you a bit how'd you like that one interesting very interesting to me he's the great Russ composer of the 19th century not rimsky but we'll play a bit of rimsky re orchestrating misorski and you can see what the change this is but this is mazor's most famous piece because it was featured in a 1940 Disney movie called Fantasia that you've probably seen I've
seen maybe even showed to your kid uh Leopold Sakowski was conducting that and this is night on Bal mountain and here's dudl doing it let's see how this recording goes [Music] this is pictures at an exhibition also orchestrated by rimsky and is this as mersi intended it no not at all we can hear that in a moment it's like Hollywood music again isn't
it nice but it bothers me and now let's hear it as misorski intended it now that opening part misorski intended it as Russian church bells uh but it's obscured by the orchestration and the piano version this is Richter playing is again exent and willful the [Music] [Music] [Music] see how he doesn't really the [Music] tension sounds like it's scoring a
story it feels very narrative based and it is it's fully narrative based each movement of this piece is about different characters this is the gnome [Music] the bells return m [Music] is it always played this fast on piano this is one of those pieces every pianist plays it differently I see and RoR had this highly eccentric style which I think matches misorski perfectly
Horowitz and richer are the two greatest recordings of this piece and this is Rich how different is the horor let's see if we can find it I think the harwitz recording was 1952 yeah Carnegie Hall here we go [Music] each pianist is just refusing to smooth out the piece they're nervous they're jittery the energy comes through I believe emson L and Palmer did
a album of mersi they called it was it pictures at an exhibition yeah yeah let's see if Emon L Palmer [Music] the [Music] oh [Music] the [Music] [Music] I think misorski would have liked this better than the rimsky [Music] version so 1970s really fun yeah now one other element in Russian music we can't leave out is chaikovsky where was chaikovsky
on the timeline I think chaikovsky is dying in the 1890s I believe so he's the second half of the 19th century at the time of his death he's probably the most famous composer in all of Europe he makes Russians proud of themselves again he's very much a Russian nationalist when the Ukraine war started a lot of concert Halls canceled his music which I
think was a big mistake uh but people were you know mixing something from culture from say 1880 with a war being fought today and shikovski got canceled another time because he very much enjoyed erotically aison with young boys and even he felt he was doing the wrong thing you see this in his correspondence but he was gay and had a proclivity age-wise in you know very much the wrong
direction so he's just been a controversial figure but just his sheer ability to compose was so strong and it it it's aggressive and it's driving it's wonderfully orchestrated uh I think it's what stry wanted to avoid in a way but let's hear a classic chaikovsky piece which is not too long march slav and this also communicates the nationalism if you knew nothing about
this piece and you heard it and someone said where is it from in half a second you would know where it's from okay oh [Music] ah [Music] again the connection to movie music you can hear the rimsky influence it's so seductive isn't it yes it sounds uh beautiful sad um labored uh hardworking and then at the part where we stopped it sounded like it blossomed
into something more beautiful which is common in chaikovsky that was by abido Italian conductor let's see if we can find a Russian conductor doing this here's a name that appears to be Russian [Music] n [Music] the [Music] a oh [Music] a [Music] that one the quality of the orchestra isn't nearly as good but in many ways I prefer the faster interpretation of a
10-minute piece this one is more than a minute faster I preferred the first one th this one sounded more multi-dimensional but I liked it less yeah well there are many different ways of doing the March slav but uh it's definitely Russian music now another early influence here is scriabin Stravinsky and scriabin knew each other and Stravinsky
was a big admirer of scriabin's last two piano sonatas but let's see if we can find a short piece here Opus 42 number five is a scriabin classic and uh very mystical so scriabin you can think of is glorifying the individual will some kind of Union of all things he worshiped the orgasm uh he was in a way an early precursor of raves he thought a concert
should have Sight and Sound and scent and be a multi sensory experience and it should just allow you to immerse yourself in the Ecstasy of being and what year was he very early 20th century are his best Works uh he has a fairly short period of being at his Peak let's see same time as Reich CU you know the orone soundss very much tied into what you're describing but he is first
chronologically and uh scriabin was strange people thought he was strange at the time no one knew what to make of it and this atude it just keeps on moving and a bit scurries off into nowhere but it's just pulling you along and it keeps on confusing you and there's one version here with harwitz playing who was of course a great scriabin player
he was the first pianist to really introduce scriabin to America and convince people there was something to it so let's see what this performance [Music] he sounds more like a descendant of mizeri than rimsey absolutely and you you hear the bells a bit there also a lot of chopan influence in there but it's a piece that scatters itself it feels chaotic yeah scriabin had a great
influence on 20th Century Music he also could be satanic so my favorite scriabin piece it's Sonata number nine someone else later called it the Black Mass Sonata let's hear it there's a lot of good recordings of this let's try tanov [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] I preferred that piece to the first one he just gets better and better scriabin
he's realizing more and more his vision yeah it it still feels aimless to me but maybe that's part of his trip that's part of his trip I think yeah it feels like it's going somewhere but never arriving the piano sonatas 5 through 10 I think are the the greatest of scriabin works and Stravinsky thought the best two were nine and 10 and that was nine
that we just heard so that's 1913 so in that year culture in Russia is maybe more vital more Innovative than anywhere else and people are really Taking Chances you know put out a piece like that pretty different absolutely but it happened and a lot of people were doing it so you're Stravinsky it sounds Fearless yeah it was the visual arts then dancing ballet was all quite
Fearless until a bit after the Bolsheviks took over so that's one of the great cultural tragedies of human history I think is that all these Traditions essentially were lost so even Stravinsky he's going to leave Russia at the time of World War I a mix of not wanting to fight and not wanting to be in a country that might lose and he goes to Switzerland later he
goes to Paris much later he ends up living in Los Angeles but that whole environment was just torn apart by the two Wars and the Communists does his music change when he leaves Russia oh absolutely but with Stravinsky it's changing every piece so one thing Stravinsky does so he's stuffed with all this Russian music he studied Trench music very carefully
knew all the classics Beethoven and and so on and uh like what can you do that's different so he in part wanted to rebel against Thai culture so rimsky for instance writes many operas even mazori writes two operas kenina and Boris gnov and Stravinsky by doing ballet which we now take for granted but at the time it was a radical anti-establishment
statement that we're not going to do Opera there's something about ballet that's closer to the people and he's also going to inject uh ideas from French music and what was later called primitivism into his ballets and furthermore the ballets gave rise to artworks so the people who would design the sets were some of Russia's greatest artists like box uh and benois
and instead of doing paintings they thought they're going to do something sort of low class in art which is just design ballet sets but a lot of the greatest work works of Russian Art are these designs of ballet sets which are not paintings but quite incredible and there's this whole movement to just do everything differently which is peing you could say you know the
1910s up through first world war so let's hear part of one of Stravinsky's ballets this is the Firebird Suite this is when he was still living in Russia yes he revised a lot of his work so what year exactly something was composed uh but this would be a little before scri the scriabin piece which was 1912 1913 and here he's not fully radical but
you can see he's up to big changes here's a James LaVine version we'll play a bit of this this was also in the Disney movie Fantasia and this starts as slow and creeping and then it's going to blossom into something a bit Lush so you're going to hear a lot of rimsky in this piece too [Music] [Music] this sounds more English and deusi is a huge influence and rimsky [Music]
too it's like pastoral mhm [Music] [Music] [Music] the fully radical move is going to come with right of spring which is 1913 and it takes a little while for that piece to get going but that's when Stravinsky really is breaking with his past and bringing primitivism and this ritual and this idea of sacrifice into to music some people have said this was a
precursor of World War I when it was first performed the reports were that the audiences rioted and threw chairs and made trouble and were violent I'm not sure we know exactly how true that was or if it's apocryphal but some weird things are going to happen so let's let this one rip [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you can see it building [Music]
[Music] [Music] now we get to the second movement [Music] he [Music] he he [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] now that the second movement of right of Springs maybe the most important movement in all of 20th century classical music the idea that you take what was music and organize it as blocks of sound it's a precursor to John Cage precursor to Electronica points the way
for how classical music and later rock and roll might be integrated uh Noise music comes from that and Stravinsky had all that that Russian music in his background and he came up with something that that topped it that was more original was this before George gerswin as well yeah cuz I hear the gerswin I hear gerswin in this absolutely you hear
a lot of Movie music coming from it Bernard Herman influenced by this oh for sure yeah so just everything is coming from right of spring a bit true RKA uh and in particular that second movement it's most obvious you just hit someone with something so radical and sound that it falls them over and if you hear that movement live it's just phenomenal and to see that performed
with the ballet where people are basically performing ritual sacrifice the whole visuals the whole everything together unbelievable one of the best musical experiences of my life was to see that live fantastic we to see it the Kennedy Center in Washington DC it was a good performance and the notion that terrible things were going to happen in
Europe you also hear in that music yeah and people just couldn't go back to making music the old way after they heard that so they heard that they heard schernberg and they heard VZ let me play you with a little of VZ okay VZ is coming from stravinski and most people don't like it but it's very percussive and you can just see where stockhouse
and cage many other things in classical music will be coming from here's a short bit from emarq and then we'll do a short bit from ionization but you can see where 20th century music is headed and now this is or as a lot of this would be from the 1920s [Music] very closely related [Music] [Applause] [Music] then Veris thought well like why even bother with Melody at all let's just
organize the sound percussively here's ionization [Music] is this at the time where the visual arts were getting abstract as well absolutely and uh most people today don't like to listen to that but you know Paul McCartney was a big fan of all the music in that direction including VZ and the idea that rock and roll would incorporate sound effects that were
sound and then John Cage music is only sound Brian Eno coming through VZ which came from Stravinsky which is coming from the earlier Russian works but with Stravinsky own Innovations can we listen to a late Stravinsky piece you like just to hear his uh the arc sure let's listen to something from Stravinsky's neoclassical period so Stravinsky in his Memoir my
life which is a fun book he said well when I did write of spring everyone hated it at first but it actually fit the time and within a month or two you know people came around and they accepted it and then they loved it he actually made his career when he lived in the US he'd go around and he would conduct his famous ballets and that's what they paid him for not actually for
composing but he he so rebelled against himself and there was a famous trip he had through Italy in fact he and Picasso were traveling together you know to too bad there were no podcasts back then those must have been phenomenal conversations and they heard some music and Stravinsky did starting in the 20s what is called his neoclassical turn he
got fed up with his earlier directions or he felt he had done everything with them that he could and he said my audiences always hated the neoclassical turn even though it was quite melodic and more or less sounded entirely normal let's see if we can find a piece from Panella this was very stripped Down music so here's a one minute segment called Tarantella you'll still hear some
of the rhythmic propulsion and short sharp phrases of earlier Stravinsky but it's turned into something quite different and what year would this have been Pinella he revised a few times the first draft I think is 1920 the seminal draft I think is 1926 which one we're hearing now I would guess 26 but it's the 20s so 10 years later right [Music]
was Tarantella a dance yes did it involve spinning involves spinning and the big influence years Mozart of course in the 18th century [Music] [Music] a fun piece yes yeah just melodic tic so do you think he was looking backwards and finding a new way to interpret what he liked about old music that is what I think but you still hear the Stravinsky in it don't you yes
and I'll play you the opening bit of P chanella which he took from a early 18th century Theme by per Gacy and uh perar Lacy was a great composer of his time he died I think at age 26 let's see [Music] feels more like rimy absolutely is he mocking us is it satire is it synthesis all of the above or maybe he just came around for realizing it was really good it was
[Music] fun the rhythmic jolts are still in there though [Music] so I guess I interpret him as somehow in his head trying to bring all his music together and he just kept on trying trying trying and that meant every piece shifted and was quite different and I've played just a few pieces for you but you see like none of them are like the others none of them are like the others
yes his very last piece I think he was actually was conducting this in Venice I think he died in Venice he's buried in Venice and uh this you know his whole life he had this rivalry with Arnold sherber who was the other great innovator a tonal music 12 tone music which for most of his life Stravinsky he either hated it or he claimed to hate it
but when he got to the very end of his life it was where he turned I'll play you a very short bit of this requim canticles sister vinsky is born in 1882 dying in 1971 and let's just do a short bit from RE Willam canticles this is how late was it written this piece you would you guess 1960s 60s yeah so he's active he lives uh you know to be basically 90 and he's
active his whole life so the complete Stravinsky is about 23 or so compact discs there's a box you can buy it's conducted by Stravinsky himself but this will sound really different and you've listened to the entire all of the strain by Stravinsky and listen to it sequentially in order which is a fascinating thing to do and how many hours of music is it 23 discs 70 minutes
on average a disc it adds up right yeah so almost 30 hours here's requ Mechanicals [Music] also be Bernard heres [Music] yes that was quite good yeah I like that piece very much but uh again not for everyone but he was always experimenting and just to close before I need to get off to the airport to see Stravinsky's own influence on Russian music even
through the age of Stalin let's hear a little bit of shastovich let's try the second movement of the string quartet number eight and when would this have been from about 1940 so Shostakovich called this the Dre no maybe a little later but during the war he called it the Dresden Corte and it was a kind of Memorial to the suffering of victims of the war
[Music] even the chovsky in there right n [Music] n [Music] how would you describe the Russian music versus the European music of the era how do you describe the differences EUR the rest of European music is so much more urban oriented so you have Bak going around to different cities monity being in manua and it's Court music of a kind or church music or
Urbane and the Russian music it's earthy it's drawing from the folk Traditions folk songs oh let's see if we can close with one Stravinsky song I don't know if it's in your system but it's called Tilly bomb it's one of my favorite short trinsky pieces there's a few versions of this here's a one minute [Music] [Music] version for [Music] [Music] [Music]
[Applause] [Music] that's what Russian music has a lot of other musics don't and do you think it has to do with the conditions that lead to the writing of the music I think so all surrounded by all that folk music late urbanization there is a church music but it's more purely lurgical it and something like box Brandenburg kerity which is composed a long time ago
nothing like that is being done in Russia so you have these primitivist influences you then have Romanticism nationalism and a lot of weirdness and Russian culture very tolerant of weirdos I would say in a good way so people like scriabin and Stravinsky could do their thing and then it's just all blossomed great thank you so much my pleasure round