A dizzyingly impactful performance without a score in sight
Attending a live performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” – one of the most influential pieces of music of the 20th century (and arguably in history) – is an experience I would recommend to anyone. Since its cataclysmic first performance in Paris in 1913, “The Rite of Spring” is a work that seems to have a unique hold over the collective imaginations of audiences everywhere and is usually a firm favourite with attendees at the BBC Proms. However, this year’s performance by Aurora, an orchestra founded in 2004 by conductors Nicholas Collon and Robin Ticciati, pushes the boundaries even further by not only performing the entire piece from memory (an astonishing accomplishment in and of itself) but also delving into the backstory behind its creation, as well as deconstructing passages of the music to allow the audience even deeper insight into its devilish complexity and infectiously hypnotic melodies.
In the first half, Jane Mitchell’s script is engaging and infused with colour and humour, with actors Charlotte Ritchie and Karl Queensborough switching seamlessly between narration and performing verbatim extracts from written accounts that effectively bring to life the spirited and, at times fraught, working relationships between figures such as Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Diaghilev and Marie Rambert, all working tirelessly to carry off an apparently insurmountable feat. We learn that the kernel from which The Rite of Spring originated was a mental image that Stravinsky himself referred to as a vision. Maintaining a friendship with archaeologist and philosopher Nicholas Roerich (who would come to work as his costume and set designer) and steeped in ancient history and Slavic folklore, he imagined a pagan ritual in which a young woman danced herself to death before tribal elders, sacrificing herself to usher in the coming of the spring. It was this vision that would ultimately form the basis for the music and ballet itself.
In the passages dedicated to musical exposition, Nicholas Collon peeled back layers of the score, like a magician revealing his secrets before pulling the rabbit out of the hat. With lines of the score stripped back, it was possible to truly consider the individual working parts of the machine that constituted the piece as a whole. This was a wonderfully innovative approach that only served to make the second half of the performance even more gratifying to experience. For instance, the orchestra sang through the Lithuanian folk melody which Stravinsky adapted and reformulated to become the Rite of Spring’s opening bassoon solo. It was fascinating to hear about Stravinsky’s mining of folk songs and hearing the extent to which these trickled into the finished work. Collon also divided up the audience to sing chords and clap polyrhythms, again as a means of illustrating the individual cogs and gears thrumming away under the surface of the piece. This brilliant use of audience participation allowed a much deeper appreciation of the sheer ingenuity and intricacy of the orchestration, which might otherwise feel hefty and impenetrable to the unfamiliar ear.
In the second half the orchestra were finally given the opportunity to fully prove their mettle and, armed with newly injected knowledge and understanding, we were treated to a blazingly frenetic interpretation of the piece that was met with a standing ovation by much of the audience. In a piece notorious for its constantly changing time signatures, I couldn’t help but feel particularly impressed by the percussion section, who held the fort with aplomb and acted as the whirring engines that drove the piece forward to its climactic conclusion. Finally, the performance was brought to a close with two encores, with musicians placing themselves in the aisles throughout the auditorium and playing through some of the most complex passages from the Rite, to offer a thrilling glimpse of what it feels like to play in an orchestra.