Four Norwegian Moods

Program notes

About the Work

The Four Norwegian Moods date from 1942, another product of Stravinsky’s Hollywood years. Stravinsky built them on Norwegian folk tunes and cast them as a short concert suite of four movements, which the Boston Symphony Orchestra first performed under his direction in January 1944. These are not romantic tone-paintings of fjords but crisp, objective little studies in the neoclassical manner.

The result is wholly typical of the mature Stravinsky: folk melodies treated with affectionate detachment, dressed in lean, brilliant orchestration and bracing rhythms. It is light music in the best sense (economical, witty, beautifully made) and a rarity in the concert hall, making this a welcome chance to hear a lesser-known corner of Stravinsky’s output.

What to Listen For

The suite falls into four short movements: an opening ‘Intrada,’ a ‘Song,’ a ‘Wedding Dance’ and a closing ‘Cortège.’ Listen for the simple Norwegian folk tunes at the heart of each, and for what Stravinsky does to and around them: the clean, slightly tart harmonies, the springy rhythms, the transparent scoring in which every line is audible. There is a deadpan humour to the way he sets these homely melodies in his own sophisticated frame, never mocking them, but never sentimentalising them either.