Intimate Stravincky

No. 283 of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT  series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast283

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Before I provide my usual musings on this week’s podcast, I thought I would take this time to discuss some of our programming for the coming months.

I usually slow down during the summer, which has meant no Tuesday Blogs. This year, however, I have decided to keep up with my usual cadence of providing Tuesday and Friday posts on alternating weeks. I’ve decided to do so mainly because I’m keeping my options open for a possible slowdown in 2019. When I first discussed that prospect at my 2017 Year In Review post, I was clearly under the impression that we would be making some significant changes at home in 2019 – which we may still do – but it appears less and less likely that will be the case. Those of you who have had children come back home after University will understand this situation – what my wife and I thought would be an opportunity to downsize now have to rethink that plan, at least for the next year or so.

In order to continue to have our programming stay in step with Project 366, I have to program some Cover 2 Cover shares involving music by Tchaikovsky in the Summer and begin building up some posts for Part 3 of the Project – which I had planned as a “light” program of 56 Listener Guides before we transition into the fourth and final phase of the project, a 12-month Musical Calendar that will require not only 66 additional Guides, but map the remaining 300 to days on that calendar. I have mapped out all 366 in my mind, and notionally assigned them to dates on two calendars – one covering all of 2020, the other starting in the latter half of 2019 and spanning 12 months from that point on. The path I end up choosing depends entirely on what we do in 2019, thus the need to keeps “options open”.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I needed to bring you into my thinking as a way of explaining some of my programming choices for the remainder of 2018.

Speaking of that programing, as we segue into this week’s podcast, you must have noticed there’s been a lot of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky among our montages in 2018. This is easily explained as an artifact of our Project 366 time capsules, with specific chapters planned on the music of Tchaikovsky (sometime this summer) and Stravinsky (to close off Part 2) as representatives of Romantic and Modern music, respectively.

Ten days or so ago, Stravinsky would have celebrated his 136^th birthday. Maybe that thin excuse helps justify our choice for this “Bonus Quarterly” podcast coinciding with the 5^th Friday of June.

What I like about this week’s montage is that it illustrates just how diverse Stravinsky’s output really is – we think of the great ballets, some of his symphonic works, and even his choral and operatic works. However, Stravinsky has left a great deal of chamber music, and works for solo instrument. This selection of “intimate” works by Stravinsky spans many decades, and features most notably tracks from a pair of recordings by members of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble.

I think you will love this music too.