Always different

Amidst the interminable tundra of centennial Shostakovich the very thought of an ‘Igor Fest’ is refreshing. And Birmingham’s four-year plan to play every note by the 20th century’s representative composer got off to a marvellous start last month with the CBSO under Sakari Oramo.

A major positive about Stravinsky is just what his detractors used to pounce upon as a defect: he’s always doing something different. Even through the 30 years of common-practice ‘neoclassicism’ from the early 1920s culminating in the late 1950s with The Rake’s Progress, the variety is astonishing, embracing the wit and cheek of the Octet, the graceful suavity of Apollo and the sober seriousness of Orpheus; the twin Attic peaks of Oedipus Rex (implacable, turned to stone) and Persephone (Rameau plus Gounod, lapp’d in rejuvenescent lullabies); the chaste ‘Greek Urn’ of the violin-and-piano Duo Concertante and the crashing grandeur of the Concerto for Two Pianos; the neo-romantic Fairy’s Kiss (loving hommage to Tchaikovsky’s life and music) and the neo-Byzantine splendour of the Symphony of Psalms; the cool constructivism of the Symphony in C and the burning drive of the Symphony in Three Movements.