It's appropriate to have a performance of Igor Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat performed by an ensemble featuring violinist Isabelle Faust, for this little melodrama is a bit Faustian with its story of a traveling soldier who sells his fiddle to the Devil in return for economic gain. Faust leads a jazz-like septet of violin, double bass, clarinet, cornet, bassoon, and percussion. If it does not really succeed as jazz (Stravinsky apparently gave himself a crash course in the subject, and the Ragtime section in the second ...
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It's appropriate to have a performance of Igor Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat performed by an ensemble featuring violinist Isabelle Faust, for this little melodrama is a bit Faustian with its story of a traveling soldier who sells his fiddle to the Devil in return for economic gain. Faust leads a jazz-like septet of violin, double bass, clarinet, cornet, bassoon, and percussion. If it does not really succeed as jazz (Stravinsky apparently gave himself a crash course in the subject, and the Ragtime section in the second part is especially distant from its American models), the music is a lively and edgy potpourri of styles that, more than anything else Stravinsky wrote, looks forward to postmodern juxtapositions. The narration of Dominique Horwitz, playing the parts of the Narrator, the Soldier, and the Devil, lies a bit uncomfortably between French and English, and there are other points on which one might quibble. Overall though, this is a performance that captures exactly what Stravinsky was...
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