Piano-Rag-Music. Dédié à Arthur Rubinstein (1919).

Bookseller Notes

Stravinsky's most jazz-influenced piece, following on from the style of two movements from l'Histoire du Soldat and Ragtime of the previous year which the composer termed 'essays in jazz portraiture', but here with a notably more improvisational quality, untrammelled, in one section of the piece, by traditional barlines - musical ideas, including elements such as ostinati and bitonality from this Russian period, thrown together in a seemingly arbitrary manner, with the melodic line sometimes little more than fragments of the chromatic scale. In his Chronicle (1936), the composer writes 'I stressed the percussion possibilities of the piano. What fascinated me most was that the different rhythmic episodes were dictated by the fingers themselves... My own fingers seem to enjoy it...' [Dialogues, Stravinsky, 1963; Stravinsky, Paul Griffiths, 1992).Although written for Arthur Rubinstein, the piece was premiered in Lausanne in November, 1919 by Jos Iturbi. From 1922, Stravinsky himself played the piano in public, the pleasure he clearly derived from Piano-Rag-Music leading to a number of performances and the renowned 1934 Columbia phonograph disc recording. It is difficult to establish for which performance this copy was used, the annotations - circled accents, annotated expression notes etc. - typical practice/rehearsal marks, though, intriguingly, there are also several notational variations pencilled in - the demi-semi quavers at bars 10 and 15, for example. The 1934 recording differs in minor respects from the published music, which, with the pencilled annotations here, suggests that Stravinsky allowed himself a measure of performance leeway, which, given the nature of the piece, seems entirely appropriate.[with] Picasso (Pablo) Igor Strawinsky, illustration from 'Revue Musicale' supplement, December 1923, signed by the composer, single sheet, very good.