Neoclassical Mask

Kate Molleson explores Igor Stravinsky’s multiple masks and myths. His love of rites and rituals. Today leaning into his neoclassicism – his turn to the past to make sense of the present.

After WW1 Stravinsky began to compose in a new way – a new style for a new age. Beginning with Pulcinella, refracting the music of Pergolesi. He described this period as a crisis, because like every modernist he was faced with a problem: how could art be meaningful after what they’d witnessed during the Great War? He described Pulcinella as a “backward look – first of many love affairs in that direction – but it was a look in the mirror, too.” Through music that was fresh and fractured, arch and ironic, Stravinsky came up with a re-ordering of the past that was ultra-present.

Overture: Sinfonia, from Pulcinella Suite
Tapiola Sinfonietta
Masaaki Suzuki, conductor

Suite Italienne
Amalie Stalheim, cello
Christian Ihle Hadland, piano

Sonata for Piano
Oxana Shevchenko, piano

Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Nash Ensemble
Simon Rattle, conductor

Octet
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi, conductor

Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov, conductor
Steven Osborne, piano