Beethoven Tage
- Location:
- Gustav-Siegle-Haus Stuttgart, Leonhardsplatz 28, 70182 Stuttgart
“The Soldier’s Tale” was written by Igor Stravinsky in collaboration with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz for a Swiss traveling theater troupe and premiered in 1918: The ensemble consists of a narrator and seven musicians (the roles of two actors and a dancer are not cast in the concert performance). Following his opulently scored ballet scores *The Firebird* and *The Rite of Spring*, Stravinsky surprised the musical world by responding to wartime austerity measures with his new work and creating a new “aesthetic of simplicity.” The story is accompanied musically by a radically reduced “orchestra” consisting of violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, and percussion. The narrator is integrated into the music, which consists of a virtuoso mixture of spurious quotations (tango, pastoral, march, waltz, ragtime, and chorale) set to complex rhythms.
Dominique Horwitz, Narrator
Matthias Wächter, Violin
Nina Valcheva, Double Bass
N.N., Clarinet
Michael Roser, Bassoon
Sebastian Zech, Cornet
Michael Bigelmaier, Trombone
N.N., Percussion
Conductor: Fabian Enders