CELEBRATING STRAVINSKY

Igor Stravinsky is the most famous, the most celebrated, the most recorded, perhaps the most influential composer of the 20th Century. Yet his reputation among the broader concert-going public is based almost exclusively on three early works, none originally intended for concert performance. They are the three ballet scores: “The Firebird” (1910), “Petrushka” (1911) and “Le Sacre du Printemps” (1913).

Whether the composer ever again wrote music as original, as accessible or, in the case of “Sacre,” as irresistibly controversial, is a moot point. Orchestras keep programming, audiences keep demanding and the record companies keep recording the big three not only because they sell, but because they are considered fit vehicles to enhance the reputations of young conductors.

“Sacre” served as a launching pad for Riccardo Muti when he arrived to direct the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1979 and recorded the work for Angel. A year later, “Sacre” was intended to serve a similar function for the even younger Riccardo Chailly, who was to perform and record it (for London) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The recorded part of that venture was, however, scrapped, the conductor being adjudged not ready.

Angel has wisely taken the Muti “Sacre,” which in its original compact-disc format was the whole 33-minute, $15 show, and combined it on a single CD (Angel 47408) with the the same artists’ “Petrushka” (in the slimmed-down 1947 orchestration), which also took up an entire disc.

Both performances are overwhelming, which may in the case of “Petrushka” not be what one wants of the score. Impressive as is Muti’s control and his orchestra’s virtuosity, this an exceedingly tough , charmless and un-dancey interpretation.

With “Sacre,” charm is hardly a consideration, and here Muti’s slashing, driving, marvelously detailed performance (reminiscent of the composer’s own, but far better played and recorded) makes for heady listening.

Chailly, now deemed “ready” by London, gives us a less heated, marginally more lyrical interpretation of “Sacre” with the Cleveland Orchestra, without, in London’s recording (417 325, LP or CD), quite the attention to instrumental detail one hears in Muti/Angel.

In matters of coupling, it’s no contest, Chailly providing only the brief, tacky “Four Norwegian Moods,” an inexplicable (and unsuccessful) attempt by Stravinsky to sound like Grieg, of all people.

Chailly is better able to exhibit his skills in an attractive, offbeat Stravinsky program with the London Sinfonietta (London 417 114, LP or CD), which has as its centerpiece a subtle, expertly shaped and flawlessly executed Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la fee.” It also includes the witty Octet of 1922; the sassy orchestral suites derived from his World War I-era “Easy Pieces” for piano duet; the striking “Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo,” brilliantly played by Antony Pay, and the spiky, mean-sounding little fanfare written for the opening of Lincoln Center in 1964.

No less than three compact-disc editions of the complete “Firebird” score (the suite would seem to be in disfavor these days) have recently been issued. The performers are Charles Dutoit/Montreal Symphony (London 414 409, LP or CD), Gerard Schwarz/Seattle Symphony (Delos 3051, CD) and Pierre Boulez/New York Philharmonic (CBS 42396, CD).

Since all three are impressively executed and recorded, couplings should determine the listener’s preference. The Boulez and Schwarz versions are both coupled with the blazingly colorful and far too seldom heard “Song of the Nightingale,” the symphonic poem Stravinsky drew from his 1913 opera “The Nightingale.”

The Boulez “Song” (available now for the first time--a dozen years after it was taped) and that led by Schwarz are both first-rate. Boulez’s is more softly inflected, cushioned and distant in sound, lending the score an air of mystery. Schwarz’s tautly inflected, brightly recorded, more “modern” sounding interpretation is equally valid and appealing.

Dutoit augments “Firebird” with two even earlier Stravinsky works: “Scherzo fantastique,” with its surprising allusions to Wagner, and the busy, compact and forward-looking “Fireworks,” with its no less startling reminiscence of Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”