The Crossroads of the Soul—or “L’Histoire du Soldat” Plus Four

Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” is one of those pieces that I know about—maybe have heard a snippet of—but don’t really know. I do know that this was my first time hearing the entire work; hearing it live was a big plus. Speaking of plus, before we got to “L’Histoire,” we had a four-piece prelude.

The concert started with three brief piano pieces and one piano/violin piece. These were thoroughly connected to each other according to the 32 pages of program notes (that I did not read all of).

The Program

Legenda, No. 6 from Desiat’ P’es, Opus 13 (1913), Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Prelude, from Pour le Piano (1901), Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Prelude No. 2, from Cinq Preludes, Opus 74, 1915, Alexander Scriabin (1871/2–1915)
Louange à l’immotalité de Jésus, from Quatuor pour la fins du temps (1941), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992)

L’Histoire du Soldat (1918), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
(1878–1947)

(whew!)

First, the Prokofiev was a bit subdued (somewhat odd for a concert opener). The Debussy that followed was more fiery and had some characteristic Debussy flourishes—many arpeggios that sounded like a wash of impressionistic sounds (though that was a term that Debussy did not particularly like)—plus some nice sections with block chords; thick sounds that had some heft.

To me, the Scriabin was a bit meandering, and the piece itself was very brief. The Messiaen seemed slightly disjointed—the piano and violin seemed quite independent of each other. And the violin was either playing microtones (just off the pitch) or just off the pitch.

Mary Bopp was the pianist, with Sharon Gunderson as the violinist, who also played in the Stravinsky.

L’Histoire—it was designed as a theater piece for septet, dancers, narrator, and actors. Originally, there were two (or three) actors, narrator, and a principal dancer, plus additional dancers. We got the version with septet and narrator.

The cast: Sharon Gunderson, violin; Wayne Britton, narrator; Lisa Stokes Chin, double bass; Mitch Kriegler, clarinet; Daniel Hane, bassoon; Sandra Coffin, cornet (though it looked like a trumpet to me—must do some research); Mark Broschinsky, trombone; Jay O’Brien, percussion; with John Tarbet conducting.

All played very well and Mr. Tarbet led a very tight ensemble. L’Histoire is probably best described as a morality play, where the protagonist never quite understands the moral. Our soldier makes a deal with the devil, then complains that he didn’t understand the deal. He’d been duped! He gets a second chance and agrees to the new terms. When he breaks the terms of the new contract, he loses all over again. I’m not sure what the moral is, but our soldier definitely loses out.

Stravinsky’s music throughout is very spiky and hard driven rhythmically, just like other ballet scores including Petrouchka and Rite of Spring. The chamber ensemble quality was very interesting—each of the instrumentalists got a chance to shine and there were interesting smaller groupings as well. The percussionist was practically a dancer himself, dealing with shifting rhythms, different drumsticks (including soft-headed sticks) and muffled tambourines plus playing the triangle. Just keeping track of which sticks to use and where they were was a ballet in and of itself.

The narrator did a fine job—including delineated characters—though projecting over the full ensemble was a bit problematic a couple of times. And maybe it was the translation, but it sounded a little Dr. Seuss-y to me at times. I’ll definitely explore a few different recordings. So happy I heard a (for me) first hearing of L’Histoire.

ConcertMeister