Vienna Philharmonic Bestows "The Fairy's Kiss" at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 05 March 2025 15:05

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the outstanding Stern Auditorium on the night of Saturday, March 1st, I had the great pleasure to attend another exceptionally strong concert—the second of three on consecutive days—presented by Carnegie Hall and featuring the extraordinary Vienna Philharmonic under the incomparable direction of the renowned Riccardo Muti.

The event started brilliantly with a marvelous rendition of Alfredo Catalani’s very seldom performed but exquisite Contemplazione from 1878. (The composer is most famous for his opera, La Wally.) Equally fine was a splendid account of Igor Stravinsky’s fabulous Divertimento from his ballet, The Fairy’s Kiss, which is based on songs and piano pieces by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and is a setting of the Hans Christian Anderson tale, The Ice Maiden. In his useful notes on the program, Jack Sullivan says the following about the piece: “Commissioned by Ida Rubinstein to mark the 35th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death, it premiered in 1928, with choreography byBronislava Nijinska, the younger sister of Vaslav Nijinsky.” About Stravinsky, he adds:

His admiration for Tchaikovsky, whose works he conducted, went back many years; he accepted the offer to compose Le baiser de la fée because “it would give me an opportunity of paying my heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky’s wonderful talent.”

He goes on to provide some relevant background: 

In The Ice Maiden, a child is stolen by sprites during a storm and marked by a fairy with a kiss; years later, she returns in disguise and tricks him into declaring his love for her as he is celebrating his upcoming wedding, then kisses him again and takes him away to her world “beyond time and place.” Stravinsky transformed this story of supernatural kidnapping into a fable about art in which the fairy becomes the artist’s muse: “It suggested an allegory of Tchaikovsky himself,” Stravinsky said. “The fairy’s kiss on the heel of the child is also the muse marking Tchaikovsky at his birth, although the muse did not claim Tchaikovsky at his wedding as she did the young man in the ballet, but rather at the height of his powers.” The fairy’s “mysterious imprint manifests itself in every work of this great artist.”

And further:

In 1934, Stravinskycreated a concert suite (first for violin and piano, then for orchestra) that he called Divertimento, consisting of highlights from the score. Some conductors prefer to create their own version from the various ballet numbers. This concert uses a 1949 revision of the suite.

The initial Sinfonia movement contains many both dramatic and playful elements but also lyrical moments, and the ensuing Danses suisses are exhilarating, even dizzying at times, as well as jubilant. The eccentric if ultimately enchanting Scherzo is ludic too but with passages of almost pure Romanticism and, of all the movements, it has possibly the most pronouncedly fairytale atmosphere, while the concluding, charming Pas de deux is maybe the most forceful—it quotes from Tchaikovsky’s magnificent song, “None but the Lonely Heart.”

The second half of the evening was also terrific: a memorable realization of Franz Schubert’s awesome Symphony in C Major, D. 944, the “Great,” which was completed in 1828. (Felix Mendelssohn conducted its premiere at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1839.) About it, Robert Schumann said, “Something beyond sorrow and joy, as these emotions have been portrayed a hundred times in music, lies concealed in this symphony … We are transported to a region where we can never remember to have been before.” The musicologist Alfred Einstein wrote of it: “How direct and simple everything is.” Sullivan records:

An analysis of the work, writes Schumann, is impossible: “One would necessarily have to transcribe the entire symphony to give the faintest notion of its intense originality throughout.”

And he adds that Antonin Dvořák, who found it “astounding” in its “richness and variety of coloring,” criticized it, curiously, for the “the fault of diffuseness”; however, Schumann referred to the symphony’s “heavenly length.”

The initial movement’s Andante introduction begins with a quiet but stirring fanfare that inaugurates a graceful sequence that slowly increases in power; the transition to the main Allegro ma non troppo section is described as “wholly new” by Schumann who explained, “We are landed; we know not how.” The thoroughly captivating and ebullient music that follows—it uncannily anticipates the Mendelssohn of the “Italian” Symphony—has a few solemn measures; the movement finishes grandly. 

The second movement, marked Andante con moto, has enchanting rhythms too; a slower, more song-like section has an almost religious character—near the end of this, according to Schumann, “a horn call sounds from a distance that seems to have descended from another world. And every other instrument seems to listen, as if some heavenly messenger were hovering through the orchestra.” After a climax, the music again ascends to a more elevated register; the movement closes softly.

The succeeding Scherzo—its tempo is Allegro vivace—whichstrongly recalls the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, has a joyous, pastoral ethos; the Trio section is also exalting and affirmative. The Allegro vivace finale is exuberant, dynamic and propulsive at times, but with gentler interludes; ultimately exultant, it concludes triumphantly. About it, Sullivan reports:

Conductor Felix Weingartner once wrote that this “intoxicating” music evoked in him “the effect as of flight through ether … Nature has denied us this joy, but great works of art give it to us.”

The artists deservedly were enthusiastically applauded.

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