Stravinsky’s Threni

There is never any doubt, then, that one has arrived in Spain. There is a faint sound of drums, a smell of crude olive oil, and current of strong, leaking electricity.
(Anthony Carson, A Train to Tarragona)

I was listening for the first time in ages to Stravinsky’s Threni this morning – the 1959 recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. There are some very impressive low notes early on and I wondered whether I was listening to a contrabassoon or a contrabass sarrusophone (or something else?). I know that Stravinsky specified the sarrusophone but would he have been happy with the double bassoon, bearing in mind it was just one year after he had written it?

Must have a look at the score – maybe it’s optional? If he didn’t have one for the recording perhaps he didn’t have one for the première either and perhaps if he didn’t have one for the première it was one of those composerly caprices.

Looking at the very detailed notes for the Robert Craft recording of Threni in the old Koch issue (KIC-CD-7514), the presence of the unusual instruments in the score (flügelhorn, alto trombone, three kinds of clarinet and sarrusophone) is not only mentioned specifically, and their particular sonic effects noted, but even more helpfully, an excerpt from a review of the first performance and the preceding rehearsal by the poet Eugenio Montale states “… the make-up of the orchestra is complex and rich in little-used instruments …” which translation I’m assuming to mean “rare in general” rather than “making only occasional contributions to the piece”. The première was very much a prestige event and had had a huge amount of trouble spent on it: the Hamburg Radio Chorus had had twenty rehearsals with Robert Craft before the first night, for example. I find it difficult to believe that if that care were being exercised, all the specified instruments would not have been made available too. The sarrusophone must have been there for the first performance.

I’ll bet it was there for the recording, too: when Craft made the CBS recordings of the one-and-a-half earlier versions of Svadebka and Les Noces with their weird demands for cimbalom, player pianos, etc., everything was supplied. Sadly these recordings only had a very limited release on an Italian CBS LP, and have never reappeared. But that’s another story …

Tags: columbia symphony orchestra, instruments, robert craft, russia, sarrusophone, stravinsky, threni