No Miscellanea Today!

The internet at my house has been down for the last two days, probably due to the monsoon-like rains we have been experiencing for the last two weeks, so I have been unable to collect amusing and entertaining links for you! The upside is that I have had a lot more time to read Taruskin and I am almost a quarter of the way through volume one of his book on Stravinsky with several pages of notes.

In place of a miscellanea, let's listen to a couple of student pieces by Stravinsky. Long thought to be lost, this is his Piano Sonata in F# minor that he wrote as a kind of audition piece to qualify for private composition lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov. The piece is modelled after piano sonatas by Tchaikovsky and Scriabin (the Third) as well as music by Glazunov.

And here is his Symphony in E flat, labeled Opus 1 as it was his first composition intended for public performance:

There is a great deal in this piece that is taken, rather directly, from a couple of symphonies by Glazunov.