It was a mystery for me. I love Stravinsky but I hate the “Right of Spring”.

I made so many attempts to “get” the “Right of Spring” that it became almost masochistic – considering that I do love and appreciate many other Stravinsky works. I own dozens of different versions that was masochistically inflicted on myself trying to understand this piece but this music never made sense to me and I always felt almost annoyed with “Right of Spring”.

So, what do you know? Yesterdays I got interesting experiences. I got home, turned my playback and tuned my tuner to WHRB. We luck Bostonians now in the period of the WHRB’s spring orgies with some cool programming, available to be accessed via higher bandwidth stream of live programming: (extremely cool for work!!!)

http://www.whrb.org/pg/MayJun2007.pdf

So, I got home, turned the tunes and it was the middle of “Right of Spring”.  For whatever reasons it suddenly sounded so interesting to me that I immediately turned my recorder. For the very first time I found the play of the “Right of Spring” not juts interesting but incredibly beautiful. It was something new to me….

The performance was by Philadelphia Orchestra lead by Riccardo Muti. I did not have this recording before. I do not know how Muti’s version is interesting among other performances of this peace – the “Right of Spring” never was anything that I cared. Still, I later was playing the fragments I managed to record and I loved it more and more. (I will get this CD)

What always annoyed me in the “Right of Spring” that it had zillion popping up out of music vulgar sound that I am sure organized with meaning but never inside my head. To me the “Right of Spring” always was like a sonic depicture a that liquid metal robot form Terminator II when he was dropped in the end of the film into melted metal with all those splashes of steel frying in all directions…  In this recoding with The Philadelphia and Muti for whatever reasons I did not fee this way. It was very musical, violent and brutal but very connected, rational and with a perfect balance between the “musical splashes” and the intention of the longer phrases.

I liked it and I am glad that my period of the “Right of Spring” virginity is over. Not I know how this piece should sound in order I understand or at least do not reject it.

Antonio J. wrote:

I've tried to listen online to WHRB, they're supposed to be broadcasting the continuation of Stravinsky's orgy, but all I get is a stream with some pop singer. I've checked their schedule and it says nothing about orgys, and lists several shows like "Jazz Spectrum", "Afternoon concert", etc. I wonder if this lady pop singer has anything to do with jazz.... Anyway, is it possible to reach through internet the orgy stream?.

I wonder if  you have tried different players to listen to mp3 streams. Maybe you're listening the wma stream.
These pieces for violin and piano they're playing right now are wonderful (12:50 your time). I didn't know them. Thanks again for pointing us to this gem.

steverino wrote:

More generally I feel that poor recordings disproportionately negatively affect modern (dissonant) music.