Principal conductor Gerhard Markson talks to Michael Dervan about Stravinsky, subject of the largest retrospective ever undertaken by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
The musical world owes a lot to the laziness of the Russian composer, Anatoly Konstantinovich Liadov. Liadov was invited by Diaghilev to write the score for the ballet, The Firebird. It was only when the pleadings of the great impresario had failed to goad him into action that the young and inexperienced Igor Stravinsky, aged 27 and with only a handful of orchestral works to his name, received the commission that would change his life, and also, arguably, the course of 20th-century music.
The success of Stravinsky's opulent, exotic, gorgeously coloured music for The Firebird, premiered in Paris in 1910, led to further commissions from Diaghilev. The bustling Petrushka, garrulous, angular and strangely poignant, followed in 1911. And two years later, to one of the most notoriously riotous receptions in the history of music, the explosion of primitive energy that is The Rite of Spring brought the orchestra into new and uncharted territory, instantly turning its 30-year-old composer into an international cause celèbre.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Stravinsky lived a long and active life. As the iconic composer of the 20th century, he worked up until the mid-1960s and his death in 1971 was front-page news. The Rite of Spring, when new, may have prompted the Musical Times to state that "it has no relation to music at all as most of us understand the word", but audiences warmed to the work. It even featured in Walt Disney's Fantasia, and it now stands as one of the most popular orchestral showpieces in the repertoire.
The decades since the composer's death have seen a re-alignment in priorities in the concert hall. The shadow cast over the later works by the three great early ballets has deepened. Smaller works - The Soldier's Tale, the Three Pieces for Clarinet, the compositions for chamber orchestra - may have gained in presence, but works such as the Symphony in C and the Symphony in Three Movements are now much less frequently heard.
The new season of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra will provide Irish audiences with an opportunity, unprecedented in Ireland, to survey Stravinsky's orchestral music, from his formal Op. 1, a by-the-book, four-movement Russian Symphony in E flat, first heard complete in 1908, through the Diaghilev ballets, the neo-classical works, the adoption of serialism, right up to the Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam of 1964.
Principal conductor Gerhard Markson is in charge for 10 of the 19 works that have been scheduled between tomorrow and May 2005. When I spoke to him about it, I began with a naive and obvious question: "Why Stravinsky?"
"He's a giant. The 20th century is defined by Stravinsky," Markson says. "The Rite of Spring is the piece of the 20th century. It marked a change of epoch. There is the time before The Rite of Spring, and there is the time after it. Like there's a time before the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven and a time after the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. Pieces that just open a door and lead us somewhere else.
"In a certain way he is the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century - the master of the whole. Leonardo was not just a great painter; he was a great craftsman, an engineer, whatever. And, of course, Picasso is the other giant.Those two figures, really, define the 20th century in their discipline. And it's about time. It's almost too late for Dublin already.
"It has to be done. It's just too important. The funny thing is people still perceive Stravinsky as being a modern composer."
Stravinsky, of course, moved quickly away from The Rite of Spring, both in the style and scale of the music he chose to write.
"It seems to be strange," says Markson. "On the other hand, I studied The Rite of Spring with Igor Markevitch, who was probably one the two conductors who conducted The Rite of Spring the way it should be done. He said to us once: 'The Rite of Spring was a great door-opener, but it was a major destruction at the same moment.' This might be the answer why Stravinsky then moved into other directions."
Markson imagines the composer having the attitude that "that's what I had to give. You do with it what you want. I have to leave that. I have to go somewhere else". He draws a parallel with Schoenberg and his abandonment of the world chromatic harmony for 12-tone composition.
When I ask about the fading presence of much of Stravinsky's later work, Markson draws parallels with other famous figures who fell into comparative neglect. In particular, he mentions Bach and the St Matthew Passion, which fell into neglect before Mendelssohn revived it in 1829, nearly 80 years after the composer's death, "reminding people that there had been a guy called Johann Sebastian Bach and he'd simply been forgotten".
When I ask what Markson makes of Stravinsky's chameleon-like changes of style, he returns to Markevitch, who, like Stravinsky, was also a Diaghilev protégé as a young composer and who knew but didn't get on with Stravinsky.
"Markevitch once gave a big speech in Weimar in 1975, and he talked about exactly that - why does Stravinsky go here and go there, doing neo-classicism, serialism, whatever," says Markson. "He believed that Stravinsky, having left Russia, lost the contact with the soil, lost his roots. Having this genius capacity of understanding inside serialism, neo- classicism, he was able to jump here, jump there. He's very ambiguous as a person.
"My first reaction, when you asked your opening question, was to say: 'Has to be Stravinsky, he's the key figure.' On the other hand, you could well speculate about the opportunity that has been missed. It's ridiculous to think about it, but let's imagine he had stayed in Russia, with this unbelievable talent. Maybe something else would have grown in a very different way. Maybe a Russian Richard Wagner. I'm not talking about the music, I'm talking about the historical dimension of Richard Wagner.
"Maybe a Russian Richard Wagner would have grown in Russia in the 20th century. We don't know. We just know that he left the country, lost his roots. And having this multi-faceted talent, he just also did what was asked of him."
Stravinsky, Markson points out, was also "a hurt and a scarred man, when he came to the West" after the Russian Revolution. His early works had fallen into a copyright black hole, and were unprotected in most of the territories where performances were taking place. His music was being performed, but without his making a cent out of it. This, says Markson, explains some of the composer's more mercenary traits in later life.
"We know, for instance, that Dumbarton Oaks was a certain length. And then he realised when it was performed that he had just missed the next category of royalty payment, by, I don't know, 59 seconds or 72 seconds or something. So in the third movement he added a number of bars, just so that he would get more money from it. That also was Stravinsky."
The revisions and re-scorings of the early ballets allowed Stravinsky to make aspects of the scoring more practical.Reducing the number of players involved brought the pieces within the scope of more orchestras, and also, crucially, he was able to secure copyright for the revised versions.
Rather than view Stravinsky and Schoenberg as the rivals they were seen to be when both men were alive, Markson sees them as "the two sides of a coin. Let's face it, the 20th century opened doors. It was very clear, that's why Stravinsky refused to deal with Strauss's music, because Strauss carried on something that, from a certain aspect, you could not carry on any more. The time was over. Take Rosenkavalier. I've conducted it, and I love the piece. But, let's be honest, the time was over when he composed it. Stravinsky and Schoenberg both realised that music had reached a critical point, facing a void, and asked, how do you fill it?
"You know, Stravinsky hadthis very strange idea, and he fought for it vehemently, that music doesn't mean anything. Which I, quite honestly, have never understood. What does he mean? The beginning of Verdi's Otello doesn't mean anything, it doesn't describe anything? But I think the statement is very typical. Both Stravinsky and Schoenberg tried to find solutions that were objective, in a sense.
"Schoenberg's idea that every note can only come back as number 13 again is trying to make music objective, not mathematical, but you know what I mean. Stravinsky, going back to neo-classicist style, for instance, tried the same, to objectify things, to get rid of the 19th century.
"Of course, at the end, we have a much more efficient third door-opener, and that's Debussy. Every damn film that you watch today, and Puccini, all that side of making music in the 20th century, that's all Debussy."
Markson is quite frank about the Stravinsky he treasures most. It's the Stravinsky of the three early ballets. "It's the most powerful Stravinsky that I know," he says.
Elsewhere, he explains, "I miss the heart, very often. Maybe I can find another word. I miss the personal commitment. The Violin Concerto is a great piece. It's adorable. But it doesn't make me glow inside".
It's actually with that concerto (with soloist Rolf Schulte) and the full, original scoring of The Firebird that Markson opens the Stravinsky season on Friday. The concert also gives a rare outing to the Scherzo fantastique, the orchestral work with which Stravinsky had followed the symphony of his student years.
It's the start of a survey more comprehensive in its detail than any the RTÉ NSO has ever embarked on before to chart the work of a single composer within the framework of a single season. The slumbering giant is stretching his limbs again.
