Histoire du soldat

Alain Altinoglu

Trading your violin for a magic book and the promise of great wealth: that seems worth considering, no? Except, of course, if it is with the devil that you are making such a pact … With Histoire du soldat, Igor Stravinsky wrote a somber radio play for a touring theatre. Seven La Monnaie soloists and a narrator will venture, along with a cartoonist, into the radically new musical idiom conjured up for this dark parable. Russian folk tunes, tango and the then emerging ragtime: these are just some of the styles the composer used to shape his musical narrative.

Arnold Schoenberg, whose 150th birthday is on the calendar this year, also pushed the artistic boundaries of his time. In his Chamber Symphony No. 1, he turned his back on the lush, sometimes extravagant orchestral sound so dear to late Romanticism after Richard Wagner had unleashed his musical dramas on the world. Yet even the master of Bayreuth could appreciate the intimacy of a smaller symphonic ensemble. In his Siegfried-Idyll, he brings together motifs from the opera of the same name, a German lullaby and fragments from a never-completed string quartet into a tender birthday present for his brand-new wife Cosima. Wagner was keen to keep the score private, but after a number of years, pressed for money, he sold it to his publisher. A devil’s pact? Perhaps rather a gift from above to the history of chamber music.