Aurora Orchestra: Inside Stravinsky & Ravel at DRUMSHEDS

Thursday 17 October 6pm & 8.30pm, DRUMSHEDS

Welcome to tonight’s shows at DRUMSHEDS, the first of its kind at the Tottenham venue. Tonight Aurora Orchestra take two famous ballet scores and explode them across the warehouse space.

Feel free to move around the orchestra during the performances and curate your own experience.

What are you listening to tonight?

Igor Stravinsky – The Firebird (1945 Suite)

Stravinsky’s The Firebird was very nearly composed by someone else. The Russian ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev was eager to commission a score for a new fairytale ballet, ready for performance in 1910, and had requested a score from the composer Anatoly Liadov. While renowned for his richly atmospheric music, Liadov was also a notoriously slow-worker with a reputation for missing deadlines. By Autumn 1909 it was clear Liadov’s score was never going to materialise on time, so Diaghilev took a chance on a young Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, an up-and-coming student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This choice would make history.

Stravinsky completed the work in six months. Dazzling in its orchestral textures and colours, its abrupt rhythms and harmonic invention, the score proved a masterpiece and Diaghilev was delighted. The work’s performers were less convinced however, and the orchestra was said to have found it ‘no less bewildering than the dancers’. Gladly the audience’s response was markedly more positive, and the dazzling combination of Stravinsky’s score, Michel Fokine’s bold choreography and the magnificent design of Alexander Golovin proved a sure hit. The writer Henri Ghéon described the work as ‘the most exquisite marvel of equilibrium that we have ever imagined between sounds, movements and forms.’

The ballet’s plot is something of a patchwork from a number of different pieces of Russian folklore featuring the character of the wicked sorcerer King Kastchei and the Firebird, a creature who is part woman, part bird and imbued with magical powers. Below, you’ll find an outline of the ballet’s story, alongside some musical points of interest to listen out for during the performance:

Introduction
The work opens to a sense of shadowy unease, as conveyed by a snaking melody in the lower strings and brass. We meet the young Prince Ivan who has wandered into the mysterious garden of a wicked sorcerer, King Kastchei.

Prelude, Dance and Variations of the Firebird
In a flurry of woodwind flourishes and whirling strings, Ivan spies the shimmering Firebird, a creature of magical possibility.

Pantomime 1, Pas de Deux, Pantomime 2
Ivan watches, spellbound, as the Firebird moves around the garden. He catches her and she begs to be released. Her pleas are mirrored in the affecting ‘Pas de deux’, the theme heard first low in the oboe before being echoed by the strings.

Scherzo, Pantomime 3
Heralded by a brief trumpet fanfare, twelve princesses appear who are trapped in the garden under a spell cast by the sorcerer. Their playful games come to life in a spirited dance that fizzes with string trills and chirruping winds. Prince Ivan is drawn to one of the princesses and the pair fall swiftly in love.

Khorovod
A duet weaves sweetly among two flutes to mark the beginning of a graceful dance between Ivan and the princess. A delicate melody then passes from oboe to solo cello to clarinet and bassoon.

Infernal Dance
Kickstarted by a ferocious chord from the orchestra, King Kastchei returns to the garden and is enraged by what he finds. He summons his demon horde who swarm around Prince Ivan. Bassoon and French horns lead the charge here with an off-beat melody, punctuated by ferocious two-note accents from the tuba.

Berceuse
In the nick of time, Prince Ivan remembers to summon the Firebird and she embarks on a dance of delicate enchantment (hear the dreamlike tick of the harp as a bassoon solo commences its winding melody). This dance lulls the sorcerer and his demons to sleep. With trembling hands, Prince Ivan then lifts and shatters the egg which holds the sorcerer’s soul, thereby freeing the garden and the princesses from his wicked curse.

Finale
A French horn solo spells the beginning of the ballet’s finale, with a melody taken from a collection of folk songs published by Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. From here, ushered by a glittering sweep of the harp, the music swells towards the most radiant and triumphant of conclusions.

Maurice Ravel – Boléro

Maurice Ravel began work on his Boléro in 1928 almost by accident. The composer had been commissioned by the Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein to write a new ballet with a Spanish theme, but the work’s iconic melody itself arrived in the composer’s fingertips mid- conversation. Chatting to his friend, the musician Gustave Samazeuilh, while Ravel tinkered at the piano with one finger, he landed on a melody that struck him as interesting. Turning to Samazeuilh, Ravel remarked: ‘Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality? I’m going to try to repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.’

Five months later the piece was finished and was set to become the composer’s most famous yet divisive work. Audiences were bowled over by its drama and intensity but other composers proved less convinced, including Ravel himself who remained somewhat baffled by the work’s reception. ‘I’ve written only one masterpiece – Boléro,’ he once remarked to the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger. ‘Unfortunately, there’s no music in it’.

Certainly the piece is crafted from limited musical resources. It features just two melodies, both repeated eight times, while the insistent snare drum rhythm that underpins the piece is heard no fewer than 169 times. The work derives its power from these repetitions, from its imaginative and cumulative orchestration, and from the extraordinary tension of a crescendo that unfolds steadily across the work, begun with a flute solo and building towards the great blare of trombones heard as the work approaches its blazing climax. The effect on the listener is nothing short of spine-tingling.

Ravel once declared: ‘Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of ‘orchestration without music’ — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.’ It is hard to argue with the nuts and bolts of Ravel’s description, but he also knew (rightly) that he’d struck gold; on arriving at a casino in Monte Carlo some years later, Ravel was asked if he would like to gamble that evening. His response: ‘I wrote Boléro and won — I’ll let it go at that’.

Aurora is deeply grateful to everyone who generously supports our work. We are particularly grateful to the Southbank Centre for its support of this evening’s performance through its Orchestra Development Fund. We would also like to thank the following individuals, organisations and trusts & foundations who have helped to make this project possible:

Arts Council England
Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at The London Community Foundation
Signatur – The Karlsson Játiva Charitable Foundation
The Church Family Trust
Louise Kaye
Michael & Rita Laven
James & Jan Lawrie
The estate of Michael Gwinnell
The Marchus Trust
Helen and Richard Sheldon
The Chapman Charitable Trust