The Stravinsky references become less obvious, and yet the new ballet seems less individual. Markevitch changes most of the subsection titles. The actual changes in the revision are few, and yet it feels like a completely different work. I believe this work profoundly influenced Markevitch's aesthetic, to the extent that he applied its viewpoint to L'envol d'Icare, now titled Icare. He described himself during this time as "dead between two lives." His original work in Italy up to this point consists mainly of Lorenzo il Magnifico (reviewed here), in which we can feel a new warmth and lightness in his music. He split from his first wife, Kyra, Nijinsky's daughter, and fell seriously ill. I've talked about this work before (see my review), and I don't want to repeat myself too much here. The ballet astonished Markevitch's major contemporaries, including Milhaud, Bartók, and Stravinsky. Although it probably stems from Stravinsky and Hindemith in conception, the music itself, as its early audiences noted, found something new and visionary, a unique expressive place that came to fruition in Markevitch's ballet L'envol d'Icare (the flight of Icarus). However, the chorale lifts everything to another level. Exciting music fills the first three, with a wild and complicated fugue crowning the third movement. The work has four movements: fast, slow, fast, with a chorale ending. That is, the music moves clearly and purposefully – neo-baroquely – whereas the text has a surreal arbitrariness. Reportedly, he wrote it under the influence of opium, and the text is more of a mood, rather than an argument. Frankly, I can't make head or tail of the Cocteau text, although the images startle. Hindemith remains the model, but Markevitch appropriates less directly. As good as the Piano Concerto is, the new work is even more solid. Markevitch thus salvaged his ballet music as the Cantate. Around this time, however, the composer met poet Jean Cocteau and the two decided to collaborate on a work. The long and the short of it: Diaghilev died and Lifar withdrew from the project, leaving Markevitch with a bunch of homeless music. Lifar, according to Lyndon-Gee's liner notes, had a higher-than-warranted opinion of his own talent. Its assurance amazes me.ĭiaghilev also commissioned a ballet from the boy, to be based on Anderson's "Emperor's New Clothes," with choreography by Serge Lifar, who had replaced Nijinsky in both Diaghilev's affections and company. One considers this a student work only in the context of Markevitch's later development. The three handsome movements – fast, slow, fast – function at Hindemith's level, with genuine expressive force.
The melodic shapes and baroque riffs of the first movement come from Hindemith's brand of neoclassicism, but one also senses here and there a personal sense of rhythm – one that disconcerts and subtly throws off or shifts the pulse by an eighth or a sixteenth. Markevitch studied Hindemith with Nadia Boulanger, the Athena of so many 20th-century composers.
#Icare solo review full
The piece brims full of the sounds of the Hindemith Kammermusiken, of all things, not all that big in Paris at the time. Markevitch was only 16, but he used his ears. Here we have two early works and one curiosity, Icare (more on that later).ĭiaghilev commissioned the Piano Concerto, one of his last commissions before he died. Nevertheless, you can indeed make out three distinct periods. Of course, with such a short career, the standard categories of early, middle, and late run roughly four years apiece.
#Icare solo review series
As with most of the other series entries, the program consists of work from early to late. This CD, the final volume in Naxos's seven-volume series of Markevitch's complete original orchestral scores (there's an arrangement for chamber ensemble of Bach's Musical Offering from 1949). Toward the end, he actually conducted at least one of his works. It took about a decade of persuasion before his death from the Director of New Music at Boosey & Hawkes, David Drew, to get him to publish or to republish his scores. Not only did he cease to produce new original work, he actively discouraged anybody else from performing those pieces he had written. Many considered him Stravinsky's chief rival, and Constant Lambert, an odd duck himself, called him the chief composer of the "Franco-Russian school." However, he stopped composing altogether in 1941, before he hit 30, and then turned to conducting.
As a teen, he composed music that set Paris on its ear. Of all the "curious cases" in music, that of Igor Markevitch ranks as one of more strange. Summary for the Busy Executive: A big noise, then silence.
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