Igor Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du Soldat: A Story for Today
PostClassical Ensemble is joined by world-renowned trombonist David Taylor and award-winning actor Edward Gero, in a new imagining of the Stravinsky classic with a new moral: #SAVETHEARTS.
In the wake of World War I, Igor Stravinsky was living in Switzerland, cut off from his family estate in Russia. He was receiving no royalties from his publisher in Berlin. Stage performances of his music by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe were very infrequent. His concert works were virtually dormant. With the Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz, he conceived a small, portable entertainment, requiring neither a large theater nor a large orchestra, in fact suitable for outdoor performance. They imagined a small touring company of players – as an aspiration that proved impractical. But the work itself has vigorously survived.
The pertinence of A Soldier’s Tale today is self-evident. It is a COVID entertainment: compact, flexible, rejecting Romantic symphonic upholstery in favor of a dry, caustic sonority conducive to bitter entertainments, light-hearted yet not evasive.
Not in my wildest imaginings could I have envisioned such revelatory and shocking interpretations… . When Taylor improvised on the bass trombone, he transformed the familiar into something strange, still plangent and bewitching, but now uttered by a voice from another world. The pathos was unrelenting, almost too much to bear.
Sudip Bose, The American Scholar, on hearing David Taylor play Schubert with PostClassical Ensemble
Program
- Daniel Schnyder: Two Duos for Saxophone and Bass Trombone
- Igor Stravinsky: A Soldier’s Tale. Adapted for PCE by Joseph Horowitz (premiere)
- Daniel Schnyder: Berlin Suite 1920
Artists
- Edward Gero, actor
- Daniel Schnyder, saxophone/composer
- David Taylor, bass trombone
- PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Practical information
- Phone: (240) 630-4322
- Venue: Stone Hill Theatrical Foundation, 40 Springwish Ln, Flint Hill, VA 22627
- Per Virginia’s COVID guidelines, attendance is limited to 100 individuals as of April 1, 2021. This is an outdoor performance. General seating will be provided in designated areas on the grounds. Feel free to bring blankets, picnics, coolers, and lawn chairs. The grounds will be open 2 hours before the performance. Free on-site parking is available.
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