by Daniel Hautzinger

If Igor Stravinsky were alive today, he would probably get along quite well with the kind of people who live in Brooklyn, sport wispy facial hair, don ugly-patterned sweaters, and qualify their interests and appearance as “ironic.” For irony seemed to be intrinsic to Stravinsky, especially once he entered middle age and began co-opting other styles of music, from Baroque to jazz. Parody is particularly evident in his solo piano works, recently recorded by Jenny Lin for the Steinway & Sons label.

Stravinsky did not compose much for piano, and many of the works he did write are short character pieces. Lin’s CD consists of two larger works, the Sonata and Serenade in A, thirteen small pieces (one of which is a simple arrangement of Mussorgsky and two of which are unfinished sketches), and an arrangement of music from the Firebird Suite. [Read more…]