“You have no right to share what you are with what you were. No one can have it all.” This is the message of “The Soldier’s Tale,” performed yesterday evening in Shepard Park by a Lake George Music Festival ensemble. The theatrical production, written by Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, combines acting, storytelling and music to tell the parable of a soldier who makes a deal with the devil. True to the literary tradition of Faustian bargains, the soldier loses everything he holds dear.
This is the fourth year the LGMF has produced a concert aimed at the younger crowd. “We try to do one every year because, as a conductor, as a musician, it’s very important to me, and the musicians behind me, to inspire that next generation, that next generation of listeners,” says LGMF Music Director and Conductor Roger Kalia
The seats at the Shepard Park Amphitheatre were filled with dozens of children who followed the story narrated by Bridget Dunigan, Managing Director of the Adirondack Theater Festival. Dunigan also performed the acting parts, reading the lines of the soldier, the Devil and the princess. A septet representing the highs and lows of each orchestral family — violin and double bass, clarinet and bassoon, trumpet and trombone and percussion — musically illustrated the drama.
Stravinsky wrote the music for “A Soldier’s Tale” in 1918. WWI had just ended and resources were scarce. “Theatres were crumbled. There was no money,” explained Kalia. That is why the composition required only seven instruments and a few actors. Kalia says that Stravinsky’s score combines the composer’s love of Russian folk rhythms and his interest in new music coming out of the United States, jazz. The story, written by Runez, is based on a Russian folktale “The Runaway Soldier and the Devil.”
In the tale, the soldier, traveling home from battle, encounters the Devil who convinces him to trade his fiddle for a book that will bring him great wealth. Here the plot takes on a Marty McFly meets Rip Van Winkle twist. The book tells of events in the future, allowing the soldier to profit from investments made with this advanced knowledge. However, the soldier himself is transported to the future and returns to his hometown to find his fiancé has married another and his friends flee when they see him believing him to be a ghost. The rest of the story tells how the soldier seeks to regain what he has lost, but he finds he cannot be who he has become and go back to who he was.
Following the concert, children were invited to try the instruments in the instrument “petting zoo.” Children in Shepard Park swarmed around tables laden with violins, violas, clarinets, flutes and various horns while LGMF members gave pointers on how to hold the instruments and produce sounds.
This 2017 Children’s Concert comes at the mid-point of the two-week Lake George Music Festival, which brings together classical musicians from around the world to perform at venues throughout the Lake George area. The Festivals continues through Thursday, Aug. 24, concluding with a grand finale, full orchestra concert in the Lake George High School auditorium. For a complete schedule and ticket information, visit the Lake George Music Festival website.
Excellent review of “the Soldiers Tale” and how it came about. Always has been one my favorite Stravinsky narrative scores along with “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” Good reporting.