Stravinsky: Jeu de cartes (The Card Game) / Danses concertantes / Capriccio

"This compilation of material previously issued on Koch International Classics (Jeu de cartes and Danses concertantes) and MusicMasters (Scènes de Ballet, Variations, and Capriccio) continues Robert Craft's highly regarded series of Stravinsky works for Naxos. If you didn't purchase these earlier at full price, now is the time to take advantage of their reissue at budget cost. The title of this particular disc is somewhat misleading in that it contains only three of Stravinsky's later ballets. The others, Apollo, Orpheus, and Agon appeared on an earlier disc. The Capriccio, however, also received ballet treatment by George Ballanchine. Thus, only Variations, lasting just under six minutes, seems out of place here....the last work on the disc, the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. In part the first and last movements of this light-hearted work remind me of the works for piano and orchestra of Francis Poulenc, especially his Double Piano Concerto which the French composer wrote three years after Stravinsky's work. The slow movement, though, is darker in mood and more typically Stravinskian. As in the other works on the disc, it receives a first-rate performance, with conductor and pianist Mark Wait relishing both the lyricism and rhythmic verve of the work. Paul Crossley with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the London Sinfonietta also provide a convincing account on Sony, a disc that contains Stravinsky's other piano/ensemble works as well."
(MusicWeb Bargain of the Month March 2008)

Commissioned by George Balanchine, Jeu de cartes is a prime example of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic ideas emerging helter-skelter from Stravinsky's imagination. Unlike his other ballets, it contains no slow music and no lovers' pas-de-deux adagio. Danses concertantes was the first large-scale piece composed entirely in what was to be Stravinsky's Hollywood home for the next 24 years. First performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Robert Craft, Variations are the densest music Stravinsky ever wrote, yet the ingenious rhythmic structures allow every note to be heard. Ezra Pound, in a balcony at the Teatro La Fenice for a September 1934 performance of the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, wrote: "the piano and orchestra are as two shells of a walnut". Alban Berg, who had shared the same concert with Stravinsky, remarked to the latter: "I wish I could write such happy music".