Album: Igor Stravinsky, Octet to Orpheus: the Neo-Classical Stravinsky (el)

Though remembered chiefly for groundbreaking works such as The Rite of Spring, for much of his career Igor Stravinsky worked on less innovative compositions, rejecting serialism until its inventor, Schoenberg, had passed away.

The pieces collected here, all conducted by the composer, are nonetheless fascinating exercises. In the case of his Ebony Concerto from 1945 and 1918's Rag Time For Eleven Instruments (in two versions, from 1934 and 1955), the broadening agent was jazz. In the latter, the pizzicato strings are surely apeing a banjo part. Ebony Concerto was written for the clarinettist Woody Herman, who performs it here with his band, Herman's Herd. In its playful disregard for convention, its ceaseless search for unusual timbral blends and its incorporation of ethnic rhythms, Ebony Concerto is a clear precursor of orchestrations later utilised by Frank Zappa. The 1943 Ode For Orchestra, originally salvaged from Orson Welles's abandoned Jane Eyre film project, likewise has a burly industry of which Zappa would surely have approved.

Pick of the album:'Ebony Concerto', 'Rag Time For Eleven Instruments', 'Ode For Orchestra'