By Franklin Crawford
The 20th century is behind us but the music of Igor Stravinsky is still ahead of its time -- and that makes him the man of the hour. The Cornell Department of Music, under the direction of Xak Bjerken, is holding a two-weeklong festival of Stravinsky's music, just for sheer love of it.
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The festival includes eight free concerts, three free public lectures and one concert with admission. This musical feast runs from Thursday, Feb. 19, to Saturday, Feb. 28, and features on-campus lectures by two of Stravinsky's contemporaries, as well as daytime and evening performances.
Like Stravinsky's music, the series offers something for everyone and includes two marionette performances of A Soldier's Tale by master puppeteer Dan Butterworth that are sure to be a hit with cabin-fevered families.
The festival concludes with the only for-pay event of the series: a Cornell Concert Series production at the State Theatre in downtown Ithaca featuring Russian tenor Daniil Shtoda and pianist Larissa Gergieva Saturday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. (ticket information below).
"I think we can say that Stravinsky had the largest influence of anyone on musicians, on other composers and on artists in general," said Bjerken, an assistant professor of music at Cornell and festival coordinator. "Here was a man with so many styles, from the humorous to the religious to the theatrical," Bjerken said. "There is a sense of liberation in his music, a visceral power and also a quirky eccentricity that really still sounds fresh today. For the listener there is a sense of a 'happening' when you go to hear his more powerful works like Los Noces, Petrushka or The Rite of Spring. And yet there is a delicate side in the songs and a more biting 'modernist' sound in the Octet and the Mass.
The event is sponsored by the Cornell music department with support from the Cornell Council for the Arts, the Department of Russian and the Center for European Studies, as well as generous donations from Ithaca residents Percy Browning and Joan Niles Sears.
Below is a roundup of concerts and talks. For a full schedule and related links, visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/music/stravinsky/.
-- 10:30 a.m. Johnson Museum, Lecture Room 2L, talk by musicologist Glenn Watkins, University of Michigan: "The Cosmopolitan Stravinsky: Culture and the Search for an Angle";
-- 1:30 p.m., Lincoln B20, talk by John McClure, former director of Columbia Masterworks and producer of most of Stravinsky's recordings: "Working with Stravinsky"; and
-- 8 p.m., Barnes Hall, Ensemble X, with conductors Steven Stucky, Cornell professor of music, and guest Mark Davis Scatterday, Cornell professor and chair of music, performing Stravinsky's Octet, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Edgar Varèse's Octandre, and Judith Kellock singing Three Japanese Lyrics, Two Poems of Konstantin Bal'mont and Maurice Ravel's Mallarmé Songs. Includes preconcert discussion, 7:15-7:45 p.m.
-- 12:30 p.m., Lincoln B20, Midday Music at Lincoln: Hommage à Stravinsky, features premieres by graduate composers, as well as Three Pieces for Clarinet and Piano Rag Music; and
-- 8 p.m., Sage Chapel, featuring Symphonies of Wind Instruments by the Cornell University Wind Ensemble, David Conn, conductor; Mass for chorus and double wind quintet by the Sage Chapel Choir, Richard Riley, Sage Choir director, conducting; and The Rite of Spring for four-hand piano by Xak Bjerken and Blaise Bryski, lecturer in music.
-- 3 p.m., Barnes Hall: Repeat performance of A Soldier's Tale with the Dan Butterworth marionettes; and
-- 8 p.m. State Theatre, Cornell Concert Series presents Russian tenor Daniil Shtoda and pianist Larissa Gergieva in a program of Russian repertoire. (Admission: general -- $14-$23; students -- $9-$14; from the ticket center at the Clinton House or the Willard Straight Hall ticket office.)
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