The Rite of Spring
Concerto for two solo pianos
Madrid (arr. Soulima Stravinsky)
Tango (arr. Victor Babin)
Circus Polka (arr. Victor Babin)

Shortly before its notorious Paris ballet premiere in 1913, this was essentially how ‘The Rite of Spring’ first saw the light of day: Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin recapture the heady, visceral thrill which must have been in the air when Stravinsky sat down at the piano with Debussy to create this landmark of modernism.

The piano was Igor Stravinsky’s instrument; he performed on it and, as he once shamefacedly admitted to his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, he composed at it. But he wrote comparatively little for it as a solo instrument. There is a sonata and a sonata-like Serenade, some arrangements including the brilliant Three Movements from Petrushka, and a longish list of mostly (not entirely) occasional short pieces. But for the most part he treated it as a sort of musical functionary. Much of his music is laid out in the way it is because of the way a small, wiry composer with long arms and big hands finds music on a piano keyboard. One of the best-known images of Stravinsky is of him sitting at an upright piano in a Swiss boarding house hammering out The Rite of Spring, to the astonishment of the residents of what is now actually called Rue du Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring Street).

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Recorded in Telex Studio Berlin on 6-8 April 2017