Igor Stravinsky

"I heard him conduct only once, during a program in his honor in 1959 at New York City's Town Hall. What an event that was! Stravinsky led a performance of Les Noces, a vocal/theater work accompanied by four pianos — played by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Roger Sessions. Each brought his own charisma to the event, but all seemed to be in awe of Stravinsky — as if he appeared before them with one foot on earth and the other planted firmly on Olympus. He was electrifying for me too. He conducted with an energy and vividness that completely conveyed his every musical intention. Seeing him at that moment, embodying his work in demeanor and gestures, is one of my most treasured musical memories. Here was Stravinsky, a musical revolutionary whose own evolution never stopped. There is not a composer who lived during his time or is alive today who was not touched, and sometimes transformed, by his work." — Philip Glass

"Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance." — Igor Stravinsky

LISTEN:
Leonidas Kavakos & Peter Nagy: Stravinsky: Suite Italienne, for Violin & Piano - VI. Minuetto - Finale (composed 1933, recorded 2002), from the Stravinsky/Bach LP (ECM New Series, 2005)
Leonidas Kavakos & Peter Nagy: Stravinsky - Suite Italienne, for violin & piano - III. Tarantella (composed 1933, recorded 2002), from the Stravinsky/Bach LP (ECM New Series, 2005)
Vladimir Ashkenazy & Andrei Gavrilov: Stravinsky - Concerto for Two Pianos - I. Con moto (composed 1935, recorded 1991), from the Stravinsky: Scherzo à la russe, Concerto for 2 pianos, Sonata for 2 pianos, Le sacre du printemps LP (Decca, 1992)
onpointradio.org :: The Life and Music of Igor Stravinsky [48:37 min]

LINKS:
lichtensteiger.de: Sacre, Igor Stravinsky
time4time: Stravinsky on Schoenberg
archive.org: Nicolas Slonimsky at 76 (February 27, 1971)
archive.org: CONVERSATIONS WITH IGOR STRAVINSKY (1959) — ROBERT CRAFT
archive.org: Poetics Of Music In The From Of Six Lessons (1947) — Igor Stravinsky
archive.org: Stravinsky In Rehearsal