Ode

Igor Stravinsky succeeds in encompassing the entire range between slow and solemn passages to fast and exuberant moments in these three highly contrasting movements. The work which is subtitled 'Elegischer Gesang in drei Teilen' [Elegaic song in three parts] begins with a melancholy but expressive first movement. The following Scherzo was originally intended as cinematic music for Robert Stevenson’s film Jane Eyre. Stravinsky characterises this movement as an amusing intermezzo sandwiched between the two slower outer movements. It was the Russian conductor Sergey Koussevitzky who had issued the commission for this work in memory of his wife Natalie, and he also conducted the first performance of the Ode in Boston in 1943.