Stravinsky, Ravel

jennifer frautschi, marta aznavoorian

Stravinsky, ever the pragmatist, composed both the Duo Concertante and Divertimento to fill a practical need: to play on tour with the violinist Samuel Dushkin.

The two met through Stravinsky’s good friend and publisher at Schott, Willy Strecker. Early in 1930, Stravinsky spent time in Wiesbaden, where he socialized extensively with Strecker. Strecker talked to him often of a young, Polish-born violinist named Samuel Dushkin, prodding Stravinsky to perhaps write something for him…

Ravel, as well, was motivated to write his violin compositions by close relationships with specific performers. One of these was the French violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, who Ravel met during World War I when she participated in a hastily organized wartime performance of his Piano Trio. Her husband had been killed in the war, and she became a very close friend of Ravel’s; in fact, his closest female friend. It is even rumored that he at one point proposed marriage to her. In the end, their relationship remained strictly platonic, and she eventually remarried the painter Jean-Luc Moreau.

-Jennifer Frautschi

Album works

Duo concertant, Igor Stravinsky
I. Cantilene
II. Eglogue I
III. Eglogue II
IV. Gigue
V. Dithyrambe
Divertimento, Igor Stravinsky (arr. Samuel Dushkin)
I. Sinfonia
II. Danses suisses
III. Scherzo
IV. Pas de deux: Adagio
V. Pas de deux: Variation
VI. Pas de deux: Coda
Violin Sonata in G Major, Maurice Ravel
I. Allegretto
II. Blues: Moderato
III. Perpetuum mobile: Allegro
IV. Tzigane

Label: Artek
Release date: 2000