[TR24][OF] Прокофьев - Симфония №5 · Стравинский - Весна священная / Prokofiev - Symphony No. 5 · Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan) - 1968-1977/2020 (Classical)

Prokofiev had written no more Symphonies since 1930. Then in the wartime year 1944, having meanwhile become a Soviet citizen, he composed "a Symphony on the dignity of the human spirit", the Fifth, cast in the classical-romantic formal mould. This bears the marks of Prokofiev's late style: predominance of attractive lyrical themes and of diatonic harmony, a pronounced Russian flavour (clarinet, wind instruments in octaves), with fewer grotesque and bizarre features than in the composer's earlier works. Gentle woodwind melodies mark the exposition of all the themes. Thus the first movement opens with a lyrical motive played by flute and bassoon in octaves, the second subject being introduced by flutes and oboes, suggesting an organ; the main section of the profound, meditative Adagio in F major is founded on a clarinet duo; the dancelike Finale is led off by the solo clarinet above horn chords. In the development sections Prokofiev was content with varying harmonic and instrumental illumination of the thematic material, without raising the working out of motives to dramatic climaxes. The demoniac wit of the young Prokofiev is recalled principally in the Scherzo, the second movement, which is in the form A-B-C-B-A; above a crisp violin ostinato (D minor, 4/4 time) the clarinet presents an insistent rising figure against sudden shifts of harmony, and rhythmical suggestions of the Ragtime of the
'twenties.
The Fifth Symphony complied with the official demand that music should be understandable by all, without becoming primitive in the means employed. Prokofiev created links between the movements by suggesting the theme of the Finale in the third subject of the first movement. The middle section of the lyrical Adagio, marked by a feeling of Russian melancholy, has the solemnity of a funeral march. The second subject of the last movement interrupts the lively 2/2 rhythm with a broad, flowing cantilena. Prokofiev was concerned throughout with clear proportions, revealing contrasts and structural logic, so that despite the considerable! dimensions of this work it creates the impression of classical form, though in a sense different from that which marked the playfully brilliant "Classical Symphony" of 1917. The instrumental resources required correspond to the late-romantic norm: triple woodwind with E flat clarinet, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, piano, harp, strings, and a large number of percussion instruments.
This Symphony received its world première in Moscow on the 13th January 1945, conducted by the composer. It was Prokofiev's last appearance as a conductor. The pianist Sviatoslav Richter was present at the world première, and wrote as follows about his estimation of the work: "The Fifth mirrors Prokofiev's inner maturity. At the same time it glances backwards. He looked back, from the heights, at all that had happened. There is something Olympian about this look into the past."
Karl Schumann

Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky (born in 1882 at Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg/Leningrad, died in 1971 in New York), made history first and foremost as a ballet composer who understood ballet as theatre expressed through dance was and able to renew music through the powers of rhythm and sound. The three early masterpieces of Stravinsky which were first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes — "L'Oiseau de Feu" (The Firebird, 1910), "Petrouchka" (1911) and "Le Sacre du Printemps" (The Rite of Spring, 1913) — established their composer's world-wide reputation. These three works illustrate his progress from the milieu of fairy-tale impressionism by way of stylized folklore to mythical, expressionistic music. Somewhat similar patterns of evolution also occurred, at the time when modern music made its decisive breakthrough, in the early works of Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg and other 20th-century "classics". The composition of the "Sacre" is marked by the fusion of instinctive and formal assurance characteristic of Stravinsky's personal style, present in its most elemental form — in rhythmical and metrical energy which is a typically Slavonic process of composition, and in the construction of melodies and motives from brief, plainsong-orientated figures, based on narrow intervals, which are both subdivided and amalgamated (thus undergoing a process similar to the interval construction within free tonality which was to characterize the twelve-note music of the Second Viennese School). Also of prime importance are the inter-relationships between the sound concept and the method by which it is realized i.e. the many-layered, specifically Stravinskyan instrumental texture, often founded on ostinati and pedal points, and magical in effect.
On the occasion of the first concert performance of his "Sacre" (April 1914, Casino de París), Stravinsky outlined the fundamental concept of his "Pictures from pagan Russia" in these words: "In 'The Rite of Spring' I have sought to represent the panic of nature before eternal beauty." Jean Cocteau had described the effect which the work created at its ballet première (May 1913, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées) as follows: "A symphony, filled with a wild sadness and the birth-pangs of the earth... melodic fragments emerging from the depths of time... profound upheavals: the Georgics of pre-history."
The score of the "symphonic poem" formed from this primeval account of the death and rebirth of mankind and nature consists of two sections, depicting respectively "The Adoration of the Earth" and "The Sacrifice of the Chosen One". Each section, following an introduction, is made up of dances in the nature of day and night pieces: a Dance of Adolescents and Mystic Dance of Maidens, Glorification of the Maiden who has been chosen for sacrifice, and Evocation and Rite of the Ancestors, culminating in the Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One.
The orchestration of "Sacre" is on a vast scale which reveals a desire to open up new fields, both tonal and rhythmical; a vast ensemble of 20 woodwind and 18 brass instruments (5 each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, double horn quartet, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, and 2 tubas) is confronted by a large group of percussion instruments (5 timpani, bass drum, tam-tam, tambour de basque, 2 antique cymbals, triangle, and guero). The traditional string forces of violins, violas, celli and double basses, correspondingly large in numbers and often sub-divided, have lost the predominant position they enjoyed in Classical and Romantic symphonic music, but they have much to contribute to the more ruggedly contoured sound structure. The basic tonal character of Stravinsky's "Sacre" has lost none of its immediacy and tremendous impact even during the last quarter of our century.
Heinrich Lindlar
[Translation: John Coombs]