STRAVINSKY conducts STRAVINSKY (1932-47) - PASC462

The present program might be called “The Uncollected Stravinsky”, as it brings together several items which have been left out of recent reissues of the composer’s recordings, mainly because they were done as “one-offs” for labels with which the composer did not usually record.  We hear here his only recordings for Polydor, Telefunken and Keynote, as well as a French Columbia recording omitted in EMI’s “Composers in Person” series set devoted to Stravinsky.

If you have this CD and the Mozart download on this webpage, plus our two earlier CDs (the one with Stravinsky conducting The Rite of Spring and the Firebird Suite, the other with him conducting the suites from Petrushka and Pulcinella), plus the 57 disc Sony Stravinsky set, plus the two-CD EMI "Composers in Person" Stravinsky release, you will have all of the composer's commercial recordings.  This new release fills in the rest of the gaps.

Stravinsky’s recording career began in 1925 with some piano solo recordings for the American Brunswick label which were never released.  Three years later, he began an association with Columbia in Europe, recording in London and Paris regularly through 1934.  The recording of L’histoire du soldat heard here dates from this period, and was made contemporaneously with the composer’s Octet, using many of the same players.

In 1935, after making what looked to be his last discs for Columbia, Stravinsky recorded his Violin Concerto for French Polydor in Paris.  The soloist was the Polish-born, American-raised Samuel Dushkin, for whom the concerto was written.  Before those sessions, Stravinsky and Dushkin had collaborated on a number of chamber recordings for Columbia, principally the Duo Concertant and assorted violin-piano arrangements of earlier Stravinsky works.

The composer returned to French Columbia one last time, on February 14th and 16th, 1938, for recordings with his son Soulima of his Concerto for Two Solo Pianos and its filler side, a Mozart Fugue.  These were not first published until 1951 and are particular rarities in their original form.  While the former was reissued in the EMI Stravinsky set, the latter was omitted.  Since the present program is nearly at the maximum length for a CD, the Mozart is being made available as a free download on the Pristine webpage devoted to this release.

Three days after the two-piano sessions in Paris were completed, Stravinsky was in Berlin, recording his ballet score Jeu de cartes with the Philharmonic in his only discs for Telefunken.  For the first time, the composer could be heard leading a world-class ensemble, recorded in state-of-the-art sound for the time, in warmly reverberant hall.

Stravinsky would not record again until April, 1940, when he began his long association with American Columbia with sessions in New York.  Between what seemed to be his last session for Columbia in 1946 and his first in a four-year association with RCA Victor that started in September, 1947, the composer recorded his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto for the small, short-lived Keynote label with an ad-hoc group that included such top-rank players as Alexander Schneider and Bernard Greenhouse.  The recording’s first LP appearance was on Mercury, but it has not had an “official” CD reissue on that label.

The sources for the transfers were first edition American Columbia “Royal Blue” shellac discs for L’histoire du soldat; Brunswick-Polydor discs pressed by American Columbia in their “Full-Range” period for the Violin Concerto; German Telefunken shellacs for Jeu de cartes; and the original Keynote 78s for Dumbarton Oaks.  The webpage-only transfer of the Mozart Fugue came from a laminated French Columbia 78.  Except for Jeu de cartes, all of the recordings were made in small, acoustically dry studios.  I have chosen not to add artificial reverberation to these so as to preserve their original impact and detail.

Mark Obert-Thorn