Next week’s Boston Symphony Orchestra program of Prokofiev’s ballet Chout ( " The Buffoon " ) and Stravinsky’s melodrama Perséphone constitutes more than just a revival of two unfamiliar Russian works. It also brings together pieces that are almost polar opposites, and in which each composer presents a different musical profile than the one we’re used to.
Chout, like so many great Russian ballets of the early 20th century, was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes. After he and Prokofiev settled on a Russian folk tale for the plot, Diaghilev asked the composer to " write some music that truly deserves to be called Russian. " This was a daunting task in 1915, a mere two years after Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps had redrawn the boundaries between tradition and modernism. Even more daunting was Prokofiev’s confession that he couldn’t remember any folk tunes from his native land.
Chout’s plot is patently ridiculous. After " demonstrating " on his own wife, a buffoon tricks seven of his friends into buying a whip that he claims can raise the dead. He escapes their wrath by dressing up as his own sister and going to work for the seven friends as their cook. Then he’s chosen as a rich merchant’s wife, but he avoids the bridal chamber by dressing a goat up in the cook’s clothes. The merchant kills the goat in a rage, after which the buffoon shakes him down for 300 rubles for killing the sister. Tough to follow? Just try dancing to it.
Well, it is a Russian folk tale. Whether the music is in any way Russian is harder to assess. Prokofiev’s score does show off many of his gifts in panorama. The orchestration is colorful and inventive and full of lyrical melodies. Less dissonant than the Scythian Suite, it nevertheless has its share of odd harmonies and spiky dissonances. Chout also boasts a comic flair that’s not so common in this composer’s better-known music.
Where Chout finds Prokofiev trying to be authentically Russian, Perséphone — a 1933 commission from the French dancer Ida Rubinstein — finds Stravinsky in high French mode. The story of the goddess’s descent into the netherworld was set in verse by the novelist André Gide, and it was an unhappy collaboration between composer and lyricist. Stravinsky’s irregular meters played havoc with the rhythms of Gide’s language, and the writer refused to participate in rehearsals or show up for the premiere.
Perséphone is a melodrama that unites instrumental music, singing, dance, and pantomime. It’s written for orchestra, chorus, solo tenor, and a " female reciter " in the role of Perséphone. Where Chout is sarcastic, Perséphone is stiff and unsmiling. The orchestra for Perséphone, used sparingly, sounds pallid, and few of the melodies are memorable. The melodramatic form, and especially the spoken part of Perséphone, is apt to strike a contemporary listener as arcane. And Stravinsky’s harmony is straightforward and conventional — which must have surprised the piece’s first audiences almost as much as its hybrid nature.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Perséphone has had few champions. Robert Craft, Stravinsky’s diehard cheerleader, invokes its text when he calls it " as fresh as the world’s first morning, and all our hearts are filled with joy. " Contemporary audiences haven’t shared his enthusiasm.
But perhaps that’s because they haven’t heard it. Stravinsky conducted the BSO in its American premiere in 1935; since then the orchestra has played the piece only once, under Colin Davis. And the combination of Perséphone and Chout certainly promises a more interesting evening than another rehash of Sacre and the Classical Symphony. The program comes courtesy of guest conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Tenor Vinson Cole and Marthe Keller help out in the Stravinsky, as do the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the American Boychoir. Performances at Symphony Hall are April 10 at 8 p.m., April 11 at 1:30, and April 12 at 8. Tickets are $25 to $90; call (617) 266-1200.
ALSO. The much-hyped Bach Collegium Japan offers a Palm Sunday eve (April 12) performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as part of the Boston Early Music Festival. That’s at 7:30 p.m. at the Church of the Immaculate Conception’s Jesuit Urban Center, in the South End. Tickets are $20 to $48; call (617) 247-1408. And adventurous Harvard pianist Robert Levin gives the world premiere of John Harbison’s Second Piano Sonata, along with works by Bach, Beethoven, Hindemith, and Franck. Part of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, his recital is April 13 at 3 p.m. at Jordan Hall. Tickets are $25 to $35; call (617) 482-6661.
