MUSIC REVIEW : Big, Bold Stravinsky Takes Center Stage at UCSB Salute

It may not have been the mother of all Stravinsky celebrations, but by the time the sage, wily strains of “L’Histoire du Soldat” capped off UC Santa Barbara’s New Music Festival on Sunday night, clearly the memory and mastery of Stravinsky were well-served.

With the fourth annual edition of this heroic little-festival-that-can, festival director and UCSB faculty member William Kraft sampled from most every stage of the great 20th-Century composer’s development.

Wisely, Kraft invited along Robert Craft, the scholar-conductor-assistant who until 1971 was companion to Stravinsky in the last 25 years of his life.

Ambitious as it was, the five-day festival had some built-in limitations. Only two orchestral works were heard, both on the first program Wednesday. Smaller chamber settings and mid-size ensembles, composed mostly of gifted student players, were the rule. Rehearsal time being precious, the Craft-conducted segments of Saturday and Sunday’s “gala” concerts were almost identical, with a couple of notable exceptions.

Sunday in the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, Craft presented a U.S. premiere of a version of “Parasha’s Aria,” from the cabaret-like “Mavra,” sung with muster by soprano Katherine Arthur. Then came a curious--startling, even--”world premiere” of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, actually a revision done by the composer in the ‘20s but never before published or played. The altered harmonizations and reworkings added richness and more of the tart objectivity Stravinsky prized to a work we already thought we knew and loved.

Pastorale, a 1907 work dedicated to Stravinsky’s teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, proved an amicable introduction to the Saturday-Sunday fare, followed by the tonally grittier, pre-”Rite of Spring” “Two Poems of Balmont” and “Three Japanese Lyrics,” lucidly sung by soprano Katrina Van Dreel.

Also heard on both evenings was Eight Instrumental Miniatures (1962), a wry-yet-warm fanfare, and an expanded Concertino (1920)--presented earlier in the week in its original form by the Anacapa String Quartet. The newer version of Concertino found violinist Sally Barr ably negotiating obsessive phrases and tangled skeins of double-stops.

Saturday’s reading of the Duo concertant (1932), by violinist Luiz Amato and pianist Jeremy Haladyna (also the festival’s assistant director), was hardy enough, though noticeably better the night before, in a downtown festival performance.

The “Histoire” presented here, staged by baritone Michael Ingham (playing the Devil) and masterfully conducted by Paul Polivnick, was less radical and more direct than the hip-hop-ish Pierre Boulez/Peter Sellars invention at the ’92 Ojai Festival.

Violinist Agnes Gottschewski fiddled with exacting abandon, while dancer Christina McCarthy, the princess, moved with winning sultry-cum-lusty intensity. By Sunday’s performance, the work proved boldly ventured, finely tooled.

Despite inherent limitations, this festival offered a timely, concentrated dose of Stravinsky’s music, the strength of which continues to galvanize with age. To boot, it was a rousing, life-affirming good time.