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STRAVINSKY Concerto in E Flat DumbartonOaks
STRAVINSKY Concerto in E Flat DumbartonOaks
entertainment music a court composer would have been called upon to write two centuries earlier to
celebrate thirty years of marriage of his duke or princeonly now the aristocrats were plutocrats. Three
movements in the standard fast-slow-fast pattern were a foregone conclusion. Stravinskys first theme is
similar to the opening of Bachs Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and his scoring likewise calls for three
violins and three violas, yet another adumbration of Bach. All fifteen instruments are treated as soloists.
The sonority is clear and bell-like, with occasional added-note dissonances, especially from the horn, to
piquant effect. The first movement is predominantly polyphonic in texture, with characteristic brief motives
intertwining and turning into a kind of fugue. The bustling rhythms, inspired by Baroque beat-marking
patterns, become entirely Stravinskyan in their flexible irregularity. The slow movement is built of little
wisps of tune or even simply of sound, growing to a shimmering texture with subdivided strings. The
processional character of the finale does not prevent it from turning briefly into a fugato as well, though it
no longer has much Bachian feel to it. The concerto is brief. Its three movements take, in all, only a
dozen minutes, yet within that span Stravinsky packs rich polyphonic textures and exhilarating wit.
Steven Ledbetter
STEVEN LEDBETTER
was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.