Igor Stravinsky — Septet

Conducting — Clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano, violin, viola, cello
Senior recital, spring 2023

Program notes

The Septet, composed thirty years later than the more commonly played Octet, is a later work of Igor Stravinsky, though still initially reflecting elements of his earlier Neoclassical idiom. The Septet opens with a traditional sonata form in the first movement with polished contrapuntal elements. The piece then departs from the Neoclassical sound in the second movement, though preserving "classical" compositional techniques, as indicated by the heading Passacaglia: a movement based on a repeating bass line, originally tonal in design, though no longer the case here. By the third movement (Gigue), Stravinsky experiments with serialism. At its core, serialism involves an ordered collection of musical elements, such as pitches or rhythms, arranged in a specific order or "series" that is then used as the basis for composing a piece through manipulation and transformation, instead of the traditional organizing principle of tonal scales and chord progressions. In this way, Stravinsky's Septet contributed to his departure from traditional tonal reference points in his earlier Neoclassical style.

I've been fortunate enough to work closely with Paul Phillips as my conducting mentor and professor. Over the past four years, I've both played Stravinsky's symphonic repertoire under Maestro Phillips' baton in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and studied the scores of his other works as a conducting student. I am honored to include Stravinsky's Septet in my capstone recital with an ensemble of musicians with whom I have worked closely, both from the back of the orchestra as a timpanist and the front as a conductor.