STRAVINSKY: Jeu de Cartes; Symphony in 3 Movements – Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch (Jeu)/London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Eugene Goossens
HDTT HDCD182, 46:12 *** [also avail. as HQCD, DVD-R or 192K download – www.highdeftapetransfers.com]:
HDTT restores, in stunning high-definition, two pungent Stravinsky scores: the 1936 Jeu de Cartes is taken from 1961 RCA 4-track tape, featuring immaculate execution by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch (1891-1968). Each movement of this ironic ballet opens with a quotation of Beethoven’s “Fate” motif from the 5th Symphony; and the various “deals” allude to a host of other familiar pieces, from Beethoven’s 8th Symphony to Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, from Le Sacre du Printemps to Der Fledermaus. In these quick diversions to other composers’ themes, Stravinsky evinces the character of The Joker, his transformative, “wild card” persona in this opus that utilizes playing cards as allegories. Is it a mere coincidence that Ralph Ellison tells us his unnamed persona in Invisible Man suffers a “fate” that somehow “was all in the cards”?
Typical of Munch and the BSO, the intensity of expression never wavers, so even the light-hearted scherzi run with a fleet energy that reminds us how talented were the wind, brass, and percussion sections of the “aristocrat of orchestras.”
The Eugene Goossens’ (1893-1962) rendition of the 1945 Symphony in 3 Movements derives from an Everest 2-track tape of 1958. Goossens reveled in brilliant starkly energetic scores, and this neo-Classic masterpiece fits the bill precisely. Like its distant kin Le Sacre du Printemps, the Symphony utilizes tiny motivic cells, eschewing “melody” as such in favor of rhythmic kernels that can explode or play whimsically in evolving variation form. Piano and harp infiltrate the Overture, adding a biting acerbic character to an already throbbing convulsive texture. Stravinsky claimed that it was his mid-1930’s encounter with Hitler’s brown shirts that inspired the relentless driving energy of the outer movements, their imminent threat. The Andante departs from the killing tension in favor of balletic impulses, a taste of the composer’s own Apollon Musagete. An aerial wind and string serenade burgeons and muses, a stately vase of a piece in tune with Keats’s “Grecian Urn.” The last movement, Con moto, smacks of emotional violence and distress, but the source remains clouded. Both hectic and brilliant, the performance moves smoothly through the agogic asymmetries that intrude every few measures. The fevered conclusion screams with primal, chthonian power.
Happily, HDTT packaging returns to the jewel-box format (for the CDs), no longer resembling a DVD and requiring taller storage space. [The illustration is of the DVD-size box.]
— Gary Lemco
