Monkeysinfezzes

Hello,
I felt like recommending this piece, even though I assume most of you have heard it, but if you haven't, in a nutshell, here it goes,

you can look more information on this on the internet, or in books, but Igor Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps is my favourite composition of the twentieth century. I saw the Toronto Symphony Orchestra perform this, and I feel that it is for the twentieth century what Beethoven's 3rd or 9th was for the 19th.

It's both accessible to the general public, and devourable to the connoisseurs.

It's amazing how such dissonance, when taken into context of a pagan fertility rite of Ancient Russia, really sets the blood boiling. No recording can do it justice, but a live orchestra with 8 horns, 4 trumpets, two timpanists, plus an acoustically perfect hall, can put you into such a savage fury... the packed house I was in didn't even wait for their standing ovation; when the piece was done, there were cheers of "YA!" and ovations of astonishment. Apparently, when this piece was premiered at the turn of the century, it caused a riot. It was that radical.

From the Norton Anthology of Western music, purpose of the show was, "not to tell a story, as in previous ballets, but to show a ritual on stage, invoking the spirit of primitive life as a balm for the ills of modern urban society."

I wonder if any enterprising conductor ever programmed this piece with a choral mass?

By taking the primitive theme, the intense romantic spirit of nature, death, ghosts, dance, strained, erotic love, and energy are mashed together and bursts into dazzling flames.

So, for anybody who hasn't heard it, get a cd, and put your volume up VERY loud.

A good recording is the one by Essa-Peka Salonen of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.