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Date: | Wed, 6 Jan 1999 07:30:17 -0600 |
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To quote Dan Dickstein once again:
>I have read on numerous occasions that Bernstein was the proud inheritor
>of Koussevitsky's copy of the score for Le Sacre. I have also read that
>this version had been rather severely reedited and renotated by Nicholas
>Slonimsky because Koussevitsky couldn't make head or tail of the original.
This is the usual nonsense about Koussevitzky. He conducted Sacre in
Russia years before he met Slonimsky, so he was obviously quite capable of
handling the odd, shifting meters in the score. I asked Slonimsky about
this when I met him in Los Angeles in 1985. The complete interview was
published in the Koussevitzky Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1. Here's the
relevant portion of that conversation:
"I rebarred this 'danse sacrale'. He (Koussevitzky) at first said,
"Well, we can't change Stravinsky's rhythms." So I said, "Nothing will
be changed. Just your downbeat will be changed which will not affect
anybody." Then he tried it and everything worked. He said, "It's
wonderful. Alright, show me what you did." I did very enthusiastically,
and he conducted my arrangement to the end of his days.
"Then Leonard Bernstein came to the orchestra (Boston Symphony) and
started conducting the way Stravinsky wrote it, but they (the players)
had it all rebarred in my way. So he said, "What's going on?" And
the musicians told him. So Leonard Bernstein took down all those
changes and in a matter of minutes he could conduct it all beacuse
he was Leonard Bernstein, and nothing was wrong with his mentality
and so forth. Leonard Bernstein wrote me about it a year ago for my
birthday, and he reminisced about it, when he found that score that
is forever there in the library of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with
my rebarring."
Tom Godell e-mail: [log in to unmask]
General Manager, WSIU-FM web: www.wsiu.org
Associate Director, SIUC Broadcasting Service
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