This album presents the most important chamber instrumental opuses of Igor Stravinsky’s thirty-year “neoclassical” period – Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Octet for Wind Instruments, the chamber concerto Dumbarton Oaks, and Ebony Concerto for clarinet and jazz ensemble.
After The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky establishes a new instrumental style, which later turned out to be characteristic of many phenomena in the music of the 20th century. The mass of dense orchestral sound gives way to a transparent and clear texture, an ensemble of relatively few concert instruments, where each instrumental line is highlighted and embossed, and each musician is a full-fledged soloist. The works of Stravinsky and his contemporaries – Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern, Ives – showcase a new attitude to instrumental texture and a special, close attention to detail.
Conductor Alexander Lazarev and the ensemble of soloists of the USSR Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, which was formed on his initiative, recorded the Stravinsky chamber works in 1984.
