Concert & Tickets

Programme note

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Jeu de cartes (1936)

First Deal (Première donne): Alla breve – Moderato assai – Tranquillo
Second Deal (Deuxième donne): Alla breve – Marcia – Variazioni 1-5 – Coda – Marcia
Third Deal (Troisième donne): Alla breve – Valse – Presto – Tempo del principio

One of Stravinsky’s earliest so-called ‘neoclassical’ works written in the aftermath of the First World War was the ballet Pulcinella, commissioned by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, the company that had first brought Stravinsky to international fame with Firebird. Pulcinella was Stravinsky’s discovery of the past, as he later described it, "the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course – the first of many love affairs in that direction – but it was a look in the mirror, too." Despite its dependence on the music of the past, Pulcinella represents an important turning point in Stravinsky’s artistic development. It revealed to him the possibilities of an engagement with all kinds of earlier music in order to renew his own musical language. Crucial, though, for his neoclassical music was not the material he borrowed (which could come from anywhere) but his attitude to it. Everything he touched he made his own.

The playful score for Jeu de cartes is relatively unusual in Stravinsky’s output in that it not only alludes to a variety of earlier music, but also quotes directly from it. The most obvious reference occurs towards the end, when a (barely) altered theme from the overture to Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is to be heard. Elsewhere in the score allusions are made to the music of Beethoven, Johann Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and even to other works by Stravinsky himself. The composer is playing games with his listeners, as befits the ballet’s subject-matter. The scenario was chiefly of Stravinsky’s making, based on his own enjoyment of playing cards. It is a relatively trivial plot in which the dancers represent the principal cards in a game of poker. There are three ‘deals’, marked by the recurrence of readily recognisable music, and each play is disrupted by the mischievous and unpredictable Joker. The music is exuberant, full of rhythmic energy and complexity, as one idea cuts across another, simple material is transformed by syncopations, and the metre refuses to settle in one place for long. Occasionally a darker shadow is cast over the music, such as in the closing moments of the score, where the ‘deal’ music takes on a more sinister character, leaving a strange taste in the mouth. Play, for Stravinsky, was a serious business.

The work was premiered by the American Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1937, and was Stravinsky’s first collaboration with George Balanchine since their time together with the Ballets Russes. It was to prove an enduring partnership: in all but one of Stravinsky’s future ballets Balanchine was to play a major creative role. Only for Balanchine would Stravinsky make changes to his scores, such was his admiration for the dances he choreographed. Their work was to culminate in Agon, first staged by the New York City Ballet in 1957, which has an abstract subject entirely without plot. ‘Agon’ is Greek for ‘contest’, and it is not hard to see its origins in the dramatized game-playing of Jeu de cartes.

© Jonathan Cross