Musical soundscapes in parallel

“I wouldn’t delve into Chopin as his world is too vast” Ígor Stravinski told his collaborator Robert Craft. Remaining true to himself, nonetheless, the Polish musician went beyond his universe of shorter compositions of profound expression to write two piano concertos. He composed the second (chronologically the first) when he was 19 and this work comes to the Maestranza stage in a performance by one of the masters of this repertoire: Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Precisely the first music by Stravinski with which the West became acquainted was inspired by Chopin in the Russian’s early ballets. Then, there is the orchestration of two pieces by Chopin which Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes, incorporated in Les Sylphides. Stravinsky opens the programme of the London Symphony Orchestra with the divertimento from the ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, a tribute to the “the muse of Tchaikovsky”, a score bathed in magic and delicacy.

In the second part, Gianandrea Noseda shows his stature with the work which, in the Paris of Diaghilev and Stravinski, served as a musical password for the Société des Apaches, as suggested by one of its members, Maurice Ravel. Symphony n.^o 2 by Borodín is a stroke of genius. Baptised as “Heroic” by its composer, it demonstrates the cultural fascination in the West for everything Russian at the beginning of the 20th century.