Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
British conductor Simon Rattle is no stranger to Stravinsky's rhythmic masterwork, The Rite of Spring. He was, after all, at the helm of the Rite Of Spring project, in which he and choreographer Roystoon Maldoom worked with school children from diverse regions as New York, and Paris, to bring a performance to the stage, in which the children were the dancers.
Yet despite his intimate familiarity with the music, there is always a freshness in its realisation under his baton. This was most striking in the film Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, whose opening scene places the audience in the Paris Opera Ballet's premiere performance of the ballet in 1913, that so shocked and appalled audiences. For patrons accustomed to hearing melodic themes by composers such as Tchaikovsky, whose ballets were prominent at the time, the primal, modern music in The Rite of Spring posed a considerable challenge.
Nowadays, we are much more familiar with a broader array of compositional styles. but it is interesting to close your eyes and listen to this piece, imagining yourself to be hearing it for the first time - as something strange and new.
The recording used in the film, and featured in the soundtrack, was recorded in 2003, the year after Simon Rattle became Artistic Director with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It's important to note that, prior to the compilation of the soundtrack for Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, this particular recording had never been released.
That alone, will place it in high demand, but there is much more to this soundtrack to be enjoyed.
For instance, Christophe Bukudjian's performance of Stravinsky's Five Easy Pieces for piano, from which the andante and moderato are included. Perhaps it's Bukudjian's extensive Chamber music performance experience that predisposes him to such a satisfyingly intimate performance of these pieces.
Ironically, the opening bars of the Andante are somewhat similar to some of Gabriel Yared's themes in Jean-Jacques Beineix' film, Betty Blue. No wonder Yared's music fit so seamlessly into the film, providing a voice, principally, for Coco Chanel. Even at it most intense, it remains legato, and there is just a hint of restraint, so that it is never as jarring as Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring.
Soundtracks to contemporary films often feature small clusters of motifs that are neither cohesive nor developed. However, the soundtrack to Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky is extremely generous, both in terms of the amount of content, and its quality.