Stravinsky: Three Greek Ballets (Apollo, Agon, Orpheus) | Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, ... |...

Stravinsky: Three Greek Ballets (Apollo, Agon, Orpheus) | Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, ... | Robert Craft & Stravinsky: 3 Ballets on Themes of Greek Mythology

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Stravinsky: Three ...

	Stravinsky: Three Greek Ballets (Apollo, Agon, Orpheus) Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, ... Naxos, 2005 average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Absolute Caftsmanship

Robert Craft was one of Stravinkij's best friends and worked closely with him in several circumstaces over the course of the years until the composer died. Craft was almost like a borther for Stravinsky (he lived with the russian composer's family both in California and later in New York City, and shared with him many ideas and projects which eventually culminated in a artistic relationship. Crafts wrote the libretto for The Flood and became the major biogarpher and Stravinskij's scholar publishing several numbers of books and essays on Starvinsky's ouvres and asethetic.

In this recording Craft is actually the best interpreterof Starvinsky's ballet music. Before I listened to this extraordinary Naxos CD, I thought tha Ansermet went farther than anybody else did --even more than Stravinskij himself. Craft made me change my mind: when you listen to his intepretation of this music, you have the feeling that he is talking to his longstanding friend Igor while conducting his music.

This recording will mark a milestone in revealing the beauty of Stravibnskij's music. Buy it, you won't regret it!

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Robert Craft & Stravinsky: 3 Ballets on Themes of Greek Mythology

Naxos is doing us all a most welcome favor by re-releasing the Robert Craft performances of Stravinsky (and some Webern, and some Schoenberg) that earlier passed through on labels like MusicMaster and Koch Classics.

On this disc we get three of the later ballets that the composer did, based on Greek themes in mythology.

The earliest of these works is the ballet, Apollo. Or Apollon musagete. (1928) Craft seems to have had a complex relationship to the master, part family, part soul-mated colleague, and maybe part worshipper of the muses. He leads a deft and balanced reading of Apollo with the LSO. Do not let yourself be misled by the mainly diatonic, or major-key based, nature of this neo-classically fresh music. It is euphonius, and transcends its analytical means.

After visiting for a day with the composer, the Russian impresario Diaghilev wrote to a friend, "...it is, of course, an amazing work, extraordinarily calm and with greater clarity than anything he has done: filigree counterpoint around transparent, clear-cut themes, all in a major key, music not of this world, but from somewhere above ..."

Diaghilev got it, then, and so do Robert Craft and the players.

Second comes the latest of these 3 ballets, Agon. (1957) By this time the master was going serial, or twelve-tone, in his very own special way. He finished Agon close to his 75th birthday, and there is little or nothing quite like it in most of the published twelve-tone literature. Somehow, Stravinsky finds the intense economies that we associate with Webern while staying true to himself. There is no published scenario to Agon, as if the music were its own reason for being a ballet. The Orchestra of St. Luke's is smaller than the LSO, but no less musically gifted. Yet again, Robert Craft's leadership is astute, and he seems to have an ear no less incisive than Pierre Boulez when it comes to pitch, texture, and rhythm. What he offers that Pierre Boulez sometimes does not, at least as recorded, is a certain warmth and involvement, a certain sensory richness and physicality.

The last ballet on this disc is the one written in between Apollo and Agon: Orpheus (1946). The choice of subject originated with Georges Balanchine who was much taken with the Orpheus myth, but ballet stage designer Isamu Noguchi also deserves credit for bringing the work to life as dance, as scene, and as total art work. Stravinsky's genius was supported and nourished by the other two, and so we get a sort of return of the younger composer, all that much wiser for being able to embrace sensuality again after having survived two world wars and ending up settled amid the posturing glitz of Hollywood and southern California. Craft leads the LSO in another fine reading.

Apollo and Orpheus were caught in Abbey Road, U.K., and Agon in an auditorium at SUNY, Purchase. The sound matches the clarity, brilliance, and sensual heft of these three performances. Never flashy. No kitsch. But generous and scintillating, nonetheless.

Check out the whole Robert Craft series of recorded Stravinsky. This disc is just one among a string of finely matched pearls, waiting for the black velvet of your listening room's expectant quiet.

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A Return to the Greeks a la Stravinsky

This marvelous CD presents three Stravinsky ballets that deal with Greek mythology and span Stravinsky's output from 1927 through 1957 allowing us to hear the manner in which Stravinsky continued to grow with the musical changes of the times (if not invent them!). The conductor is Robert Craft, Stravinsky's longtime colleague and promoter and in these recordings, each made originally on separate sessions, he conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Lukes, both ensembles having an affinity for these works.

'Apollon musagete, ballet in 2 scenes for string orchestra' (1927) is probably the finest of his neoclassical period works for orchestra alone. It can be steely cool in other's hands, but here Craft draws an achingly beautiful sound from the London Symphony. It is meditative, serenely poignant and ethereal.
'Agon, ballet for twelve dancers & orchestra' (1957) is one of Stravinsky's twelve tone works that manages to go beyond the usual constrictions of that form to become an unusually melodic work. Craft and the Orchestra of St. Lukes offer a performance that gives all of the sixteen variations individual importance.

'Orpheus, ballet in 3 scenes for orchestra' (1947) concludes the recital with the admixture of both Stravinsky's neoclassicism with his early penchant for seething romantic melody lines. This is the work of the three that will find widest audience appeal for those not yet captivated with the Stravinsky 'cerebral works' and it makes a fine way to complete this exploration into Greek themes so cleverly programmed by the reconstructors of this first class CD. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, June 06

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Very good rendition

I am so glad to find all three of these ballets on one CD.

The performance is beautiful. I could find nothing wrong with the interpretation, and I can assure you I am quite picky.

Anyway, I highly recommend this CD.

Stravinsky's Lyrical Side

As if to draw a parallel with the more famous three "Russian" ballets of his early career, Naxos here presents us with three Stravinsky ballets on classical Greek themes. The performances have an undeniable prestige, having at their helm Robert Craft, a close friend and associate of Stravinsky. ORPHEUS is one of Stravinsky's most beautiful scores, and is the piece that I would personally use to introduce new listeners to the post-RITE OF SPRING Stravinsky. It has a mysterious, haunting lyricism and longer melodic lines than we are accustomed to in Stravinsky, without however deserting the detached stoic quality which was his hallmark. The performances of all three works are smooth, graceful, expressive, and texturally refined, and the price is shockingly low for such authoritative music-making. If you love Stravinsky, there is absolutely no excuse not to own this disc.

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