5. Igor StravinskyThe Rite Of Spring
Maybe it’s a thing to do with ageing, but I listen to classical music more and more, and there’s just so much. I chose this because I saw it at the Royal Festival Hall, and it was probably the most powerful performance of a piece of music that I’ve ever been to. Its 100 years old now isn’t it? I was reading that the other day and of course there are all those stories about how shocking it was at the time. I wonder how much of it was down to Stravinsky’s hype at the time, that this music was making people so upset. I mean, if they were going to the concert they must have known vaguely what to expect. I love the myth around it all. It also does two of my favourite things. Intellectually it’s untouchable theoretically in the way it’s composed and how unrelated it is to anything that went before it and how revolutionary it was, yet when you listen to the music you don’t consider that at all. The reaction to the music has nothing to do with your brain, it’s purely emotional, and if you’re trying to listen to it and analyse it you are missing the point, you’ve just got to totally open yourself up to it.
