Igor Stravinsky, "Concertino for String Quartet"

-- Liner Notes --

3. Concertino fur Streichquartett (1920) [6'33]

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Although we know that Stravinsky regularly composed at the piano, the scoring of his music never sounds at all secondary, and he delighted throughout his life in setting himself new problems of instrumentation. The works recorded here all demonstrate this, not least the earliest of them, the Three Pieces for solo clarinet (1918), where the severest problem is that of creating music which is pure melody, without harmonic support or contrapuntal interest. There is, however, no sign of compositional strain in these lively pieces, echoing the tangy style of Histoire du soldat and designed as a thank-offering to the man who had made the production of that work possible, the Swiss patron Werner Reinhart.

Interest is again centred on a solo line in the Concertino for string quartet, which Stravinsky described as being 'in the form of a free sonata allegro with a definitely concertante part for the first violin'. The piece was written in the summer of 1920 in Brittany and was the composer's first work alter Pulcinella, so standing at the threshold of his neoclassical period while also recalling the biting violin part of Histoire du soldat.