Cleveland Orchestra Performs Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 24 March 2025 13:55

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Fadi Kheir.

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium on the night of Wednesday, March 19th, I had the privilege to attend another superb concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the second of two on consecutive days—featuring the outstanding musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra under the incomparable direction of Franz Welser-Möst. 

The event started brilliantly with a fabulous rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s marvelous Pétrouchka, played here in its 1947 revision. In quite useful notes for this program, Peter Laki provided some relevant background:

After the resounding success of The Firebird in 1908, Igor Stravinsky became an instant celebrity in Paris. His name was now inseparable from the famous Ballets Russes, whose director, Sergei Diaghilev, was eager to continue this most promising collaboration. Plans were almost immediately underway for what eventually became The Rite of Spring.

When Diaghilev visited Stravinsky in Lausanne in the summer of 1910, he expected his friend to have made some progress with The Rite of Spring. Instead, he found the composer engrossed in a completely different composition. Stravinsky had begun writing a concert piece for piano and orchestra in which the piano represented “a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios.” The puppet was none other than Petrushka (or Pétrouchka, in French), the popular Russian puppet-theater hero. Diaghilev immediately saw the dramatic potential of Stravinsky’s concert piece and persuaded the composer to turn it into a ballet. Alexandre Benois, a Russian artist and longtime Diaghilev collaborator, wrote the scenario with Stravinsky and designed the sets and costumes for the performance.

The annotator then describes the initial movement of the score:

The first of the four tableaux (“The Shrovetide Fair”) alternates between the noise of the crowd and songs played by street musicians. At first, we hear a flute signal accompanied by rapid figurations that evoke the bustle of the fair. Soon the entire orchestra breaks into a boisterous Russian beggars’ song, followed by the entrance of two competing street musicians, a hurdy-gurdy player and one with a music box.

Soon, the puppet theater opens and the Showman, playing his flute, introduces Pétrouchka, the Ballerina, and the Moor to the audience. As he touches them with his flute, the three puppets spring to life and begin the famous “Russian Dance,” in which the piano plays a predominant part. The dance and the tableau eventually end with a bang.

The fantastical is seemingly invoked at the very outset of the music even if what it ostensibly depicts is relatively prosaic. The propulsive rhythms impart a suspenseful quality and the “Russian Dance” proves especially exhilarating. Laki continues:

The second tableau moves the action to Pétrouchka’s room. It starts with a sonority that has become emblematic of the work: two clarinets playing a bitonal melody—that is, in two different keys at once. After a short piano cadenza, we hear a theme giving vent to Pétrouchka’s anger and despair at his failure to win the Ballerina’s heart. His fury changes into quiet sadness in a slow, pseudo-folk song, played by the flute and piano with occasional interjections from other instruments. The Ballerina soon enters, and Pétrouchka becomes giddy with excitement. Then she leaves, and the earlier despair motif closes the tableau.

The third tableau takes place in the Moor’s room. His slow dance is accompanied by bass drum, cymbals, and plucked strings, whose off-beat accents impart a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor to the music. Soon, the Ballerina appears, trumpet in hand, and dances for the Moor. She then starts waltzing to two melodies by Viennese composer Joseph Lanner (a forerunner of the great Strauss dynasty) while the Moor begins his own, less graceful dance. The waltz is interrupted as Pétrouchka suddenly enters the room. His fight with the Moor is expressed by frantic runs before the orchestra plays violent fortissimo chords as the Moor chases Pétrouchka out the door.

The Ballerina’s waltz is particularly lovely but not without a comic dimension that becomes more pronounced. The annotator goes on to add:

The fourth and final tableau brings us back to the fair, where, as the sun sets, more and more people are gathering for the festivities. A series of numbers are performed in succession. Among them: A group of nursemaids dance to two Russian folk songs, a trained bear dances to a peasant’s pipe (represented by two clarinets playing in their highest register), and a drunken merchant stumbles across the stage, his tune played with frequent glissandos in the strings.

Suddenly, the celebration is disrupted by a scream coming from the puppet theater. Pétrouchka rushes in, pursued by the Moor, who overtakes him and strikes him down. Soft woodwind solos, accompanied by high-pitched violin tremolos, lament Pétrouchka’s death. But as the Showman arrives to pick up the puppet and take him back to the theater, Pétrouchka’s ghost appears overhead as two trumpets intone his melody. Only a few soft string pizzicatos accompany the close of the curtain; the last event in the piece is the resurgence of Pétrouchka the invincible, thumbing his nose at the magician and the entire world, which had been so hostile to his pure and sincere feelings.

The work concludes very quietly.

The second half of the evening was comparable in strength: a terrific account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64, from 1888. Laki again is informative:

After his return from abroad, Tchaikovsky decided to write a new symphony, his first in 10 years. Characteristically, the first sketches of the new work, made on April 15, 1888, include a verbal program portraying an individual’s reactions in the face of immutable destiny, involving stages of resignation, challenge, and triumph:

“Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate, or, which is the same, before the inscrutable predestination of Providence. Allegro. (1) Murmurs of doubt, complaints, reproaches against XXX. (2) Shall I throw myself in the embraces of faith??? A wonderful program, if only it can be carried out.”

Tchaikovsky never made this program public, however, and in one of his letters even went out of his way to stress that the symphony had no program. 

He adds:

Many people believe that the unnamed, mysterious “XXX” in the sketch stands for homosexuality. In his diaries, Tchaikovsky often referred to his homosexuality as “Z” or “That.”

The theme of Fate is first heard in the somewhat lugubrious opening movement’s Andante introduction. Laki comments:

English musicologist Gerald Abraham noted that this theme was taken almost literally from an aria in Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar, in which it was sung to the words “Ne svodi na gore” (“Do not turn to sorrow”).

The main body of the Allegro con anima movement is frequently dynamic and passionate but with more subdued passages; it finishes abruptly and very softly. The ensuing, soaringly Romantic Andante cantabile is indeed song-like with a beautiful main theme played by the French horn and a second—that too is captivating—introduced by the clarinet; a powerful crescendo ushers in a recapitulation of the first motif. The music again intensifies followed by the recurrence of the initial theme; the movement closes gently. 

The brief Valse movementthat succeeds this, marked Allegro moderato, is very charming; as it becomes more spirited, it remains enchanting, ending more forcefully. The glorious Finale has a majestic character that becomes more animated, although with lyrical interludes; the music reaches a turbulent climax, while the jubilant, Presto codaachieves a triumphant close.

The artists, deservedly, received a very enthusiastic ovation.