RECORDINGS IN REVIEW

1 6 7 R R E C O R D I N G S I N R E V I E W D E W E Y F A U L K N E R ‘‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’’ So says Gavin Stevens to Temple Drake in William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun. As if to prove this, in 1972 the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented a concert of three works, all written in a space of two years shortly before World War I and all icons of modernism. Two were predictable choices: Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (1913) and Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912). The third, which opened the program, was a surprise to many: Jean Sibelius’s Symphony no. 4 in A Minor (1911). All three are very much alive and present, especially in recordings, in particular in recordings by their composers or by conductors close to the composers. The disturbing world they inhabit and predict was to arrive after 1918 – and it is with us still. Two of the three were written on commission, intended for the stage. Sacre is a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Pierrot is an accompanied recitation commissioned by the diseuse Albertine Zehme for her own presentations . Only the Sibelius symphony arose internally, seemingly prompted by the composer’s private compulsions. Their origins have a bearing on each of these works. 1 6 8 F A U L K N E R Y The most celebrated of the group is Le Sacre du printemps, The Rite of Spring. Based in Paris since 1909, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had been presenting Russia to western Europe, giving both traditional ballets using Russian choreographers, particularly Mikhail Fokine, and, increasingly, newly composed works, at first using Russian composers. Stravinsky, an accomplished pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, had enjoyed a great success with his folklorebased Firebird in 1910 and immediately went in search of new Russian subjects. That year he ‘‘saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.’’ Stravinsky consulted on this with the painter, ethnographer , and mystic Nicholas Roerich, and in July 1911 the pair devised a scenario for which Roerich sketched settings and costumes. The doubting Diaghilev soon steered Stravinsky away from Sacre to the Russian puppet clown Petrushka, leading to a ballet that premiered in 1911, with Nijinsky in the title role and conducted by young Pierre Monteux. A success like Firebird, it led Diaghilev at last to commission Sacre. As this was considered another folk-based subject, Roerich was allowed to execute his ‘‘authentic’’ designs. Monteux would again conduct. But in order to invigorate the dancing – and to placate his lover, Nijinsky – the impresario made the dancer the choreographer, following up on his scandalous 1912 success with Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. At the same time Nijinsky was also choreographing Debussy’s Jeux, in which he danced the lead. To assist in both he brought in the young Marie Rambert, an expert in Dalcrozian eurhythmics, to help him use its techniques in achieving the abrupt, jerky, rhythmic movements he wanted. Stravinsky ’s music was extraordinarily di≈cult to dance to as its bar lengths and rhythms changed constantly, at times in every bar. (When Stravinsky first played the score to him, Monteux later noted, ‘‘Before he got very far I was convinced he was raving mad.’’) And much of the dancing was to be done by the large corps, as the sacrificed girl is the only principal dancer, and further complicated by the corps’ being broken into groups, each one performing di√erently. Worse, Roerich’s costumes covered the dancers’ legs and his painted drops were plain, even stark. Still worse, Nijinsky had the R E C O R D I N G S I N R E V I E W 1 6 9 R dancers turn their toes and knees in and dance (or move) that way. Instead of another appealing bit of Russian local...