Igor Stravinsky was no natural born symphonist. Great as his ballets are, in comparison with such earlier Russian symphonist like Glazunov or later Soviet symphonists like Shostakovich, Stravinsky was a symphonic lightweight whose scores often sound more episodic than symphonic. Even in this superbly played collection of his Symphony in Three Movements, Symphony of Psalms, and Symphony in C (the student Symphony in E flat and the utterly unsymphonic Symphonies of Wind Instruments are understandably left out), the works ...
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Igor Stravinsky was no natural born symphonist. Great as his ballets are, in comparison with such earlier Russian symphonist like Glazunov or later Soviet symphonists like Shostakovich, Stravinsky was a symphonic lightweight whose scores often sound more episodic than symphonic. Even in this superbly played collection of his Symphony in Three Movements, Symphony of Psalms, and Symphony in C (the student Symphony in E flat and the utterly unsymphonic Symphonies of Wind Instruments are understandably left out), the works sound more like attempts at symphonic argument than truly convincing symphonies. The fault lies not with the Berliner Philharmoniker, which executes Stravinsky's music with unfailing verve and virtuosity, but with music director Simon Rattle, who conducts Stravinsky's scores as if they were sequences of striking musical incidents rather than cogently argued works of symphonic art. The individual parts are all in the right places, but they fail to cohere into a logical, much less a...
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