CSO Curator's Series: Stravinsky, Grenfell

Stravinsky The Soldier's Tale Suite

Grenfell And the Air Was Dancing

Hye-Won Suh - Flute

Justine Cormack - Violin

Serenity Thurlow - Viola

Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale suite (L’Histoire du soldat) packs a moral punch. Composed in 1920, this piece was arranged from Stravinsky’s 1918 theatrical work about a soldier who traded his fiddle to the devil. Inspired by Alexander Afanasiev’s collection of Russian folk tales: a soldier who returns home from the front lines and trades a magic violin with the devil, who gives him a book that promises great riches in return. The story was originally performed with a small troupe of musicians, actors, and dancers. Reimagined by the composer as music-only, and arranged across nine movements, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale suite is bold and theatrical, quiet and thoughtful, and a playful showcase of Argentine Tango and American Ragtime, two musical genres that were very much in vogue at the time.

Maria Grenfell follows with her light, shimmering work And the Air Was Dancing. Featuring three movements, solo flutes, violin, viola and string orchestra, And the Air Was Dancing imagines what the movement of air could sound like – startling murmurations twisting through the sky (Murmuration), the shifting light of an aurora (Aurora), and sunlight sparkling and darting off water (Sun-dance).