Stravinsky: Rite of Spring – Sacrificial Dance – London Philharmonic Orchestra

It’s Tuesday morning, bring out the timpani 🥁🤘 did we wake you up yet?

[LucienMarine]

The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral work by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. The Rite is a break with traditional ballet for Vaslav Nijinsky. A masterpiece of musical energy, the composition shows an absolutely prodigious network of inventiveness. From the synthesis of all the musical elements operated by Stravinsky is born an aesthetic multiplicity which intensely privileges the acoustic effects and the dramatic force. « The sacral dance » Act 2, Scene 6, is the culmination of the piece, the moment that illustrates the original idea of its composition, this dance where the brutal force of a symphony orchestra explodes, treated in a style revolutionary. The work which has exacerbated the chromaticism to the highest point, the harsh harmonies, the raw sonorities, are born from the creation of powerful instrumental blocks, that clash or complement each other, the richness of timbres of an enlarged orchestra as well as the use of playing modes that push the sounds to the extreme, emancipating the rhythmic and releasing the tonal harmony from its classico-romantic pivots. Stravinsky juxtaposes and accumulates his musical ideas in contrasting flows, which interact with each other and create a perpetual increase in the energy released, which will crystallize an innovative approach essential to the modernity of 20th century music. The fame of the work does not hesitate to make it one of the pillars of musical modernism. *Lucien*

[rondog]

Only the love child of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Lurch could conduct this confounding piece of music with such aplomb

[halofanaticboy]

Why does this remind of Star Wars? Did JW take a lot of inspiration from Stravinsky?

[Richard-brv]

Nice to see timpanist playing his timpani in the proper American configuration

[rondog]

This is why I'm against artistic conservatism for its own sake. We were lucky Stravinsky had a) the genius and b) the guts to take this to the paying public

[TheHunkyDoryMan]

Good lord this looks complicated to count