Stravinsky Suita Italian

Santtu conducts Stravinsky is the third album from Philharmonia Records featuring two incredible works by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, these two works were recorded at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in 2023.

Santtu conducts Stravinsky is the third album from Philharmonia Records featuring two incredible works by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, these two works were recorded at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in 2023.

Les Noces is a screaming, shrieking, flat-out masterpiece. Leonard Bernstein himself has referred to it as Stravinsky's greatest work, and listening to this incendiary performance, it's awfully hard to disagree. Scored for voices, four pianos, and percussion, the work provided the inspiration for the entire career of Orff (of Carmina Burana fame), but it's so much better as sheer music than anything Orff wrote. And what a cast! The pianists for this performance include Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Cyprien Katsaris, and Homero Francesch, four certified virtuoso performers, while the singers of the English Bach Festival Chorus really cover themselves with glory in both works. A stunner.

‘Delucchi has done us a great service’, noted Fanfare magazine in January 2022 after the release of his Czerny album (PCL10204) on Piano Classics. This young Italian pianist continues to go from strength to strength and to broaden his already diverse catalogue of recordings for the label – spanning Bach, Godowsky and his own music – with this new album of Stravinsky’s works for the piano.

Suite italienne is the brainchild of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha – his second album on Linn – and the Swiss ensemble CHAARTS Chamber Artists. With Italy as the common thread through each of the three works, the riotous programme includes the premiere recording of Sollima’s TYCHE, a violin concerto that was composed specifically for Jonian. Echoing Jonian and Sollima’s mixed roots, the work absorbs musical ideas from different sources and, as the title suggests, reflects on the Greek goddess of fate, or the Italian equivalent Fortuna, and the ambivalence of life itself.

Suite italienne is the brainchild of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha – his second album on Linn – and the Swiss ensemble CHAARTS Chamber Artists. With Italy as the common thread through each of the three works, the riotous programme includes the premiere recording of Sollima’s TYCHE, a violin concerto that was composed specifically for Jonian. Echoing Jonian and Sollima’s mixed roots, the work absorbs musical ideas from different sources and, as the title suggests, reflects on the Greek goddess of fate, or the Italian equivalent Fortuna, and the ambivalence of life itself.

If one considers that this 2005 CD presents music written in the early to middle twentieth century, and the latest of these is a "recomposition" of three Renaissance madrigals, then it seems a most peculiar offering in ECM's New Series line – certainly important for anyone interested in modern music but decidedly not the cutting-edge fare this label usually delivers.

Here's a conundrum: Leonidas Kavakos and Peter Nagy have selected two works each by J.S. Bach and Igor Stravinsky, for what seems a didactic demonstration of both composers' affinity for an objective "musical science"; yet the violinist and pianist deliver these works with so much feeling that their results seem quite subjective, and thereby undermine the presentation.