Word: petrouchka
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...short, with rounded muscles and the pale face of a man made up permanently as Petrouchka. Yet when he launches his perfectly arched body into the arc of one of his improbably sustained leaps-high, light, the leg beats blurring precision-he transcends the limits of physique and, it sometimes seems, those of gravity itself. If one goes by the gasps in the theater or the ecstasies of the critics, such moments turn Mikhail Baryshnikov, if not into a minor god, then into a major sorcerer...
Right now Galina is overshadowed by her husband's mature artistry. It was Panov the dancing actor rather than Panov the spectacular technician who stole the evening. As Petrouchka in Stravinsky's tragicomedy celebrating the Russian Punch, Panov combined Chaplinesque humor with a mime's mastery of the mysterious language of silence. A floppy puppet holding his heart and crying real tears, Panov shrugged his shoulders and, with a spineless collapse, fell to the floor in a human puddle. In that single movement he captured all the joy and anguish of the universal clown...
...entire piano literature: both books of Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Paganini. He continued with Chopin's powerful Sonata in B Minor, another sonata by Scriabin, a wrist-cracking Etude for the Left Hand by Blumenfeld, and finally Stravinsky's Three Scenes from Petrouchka, a piece that bristles with so many notes that much of it is written on three and even four lines instead of the usual two. He wrapped up the evening with two encores...
Freeze-Dried Piquancy. Fireworks dazzled Diaghilev, and the impresario commissioned Stravinsky to write a ballet. The result was the Tartared and feathered The Firebird (1910). This was followed a year later by the even more brilliant Petrouchka, in which the solo piano part projected a Pierrot-like puppet at a Russian fair-a part realized on the stage by the great Nijinsky. Both works were to remain Stravinsky's most popular with the public, to his eventual dismay. They also established his lifelong identification with the dance, which in later years produced notable collaborations with George Balanchine...
Stravinsky's career spanned a series of distinguished creations. Petrouchka, L' Histoire du Soldat, Oedipus Rex, dozens more. But perhaps his true spirit is reflected as well in his later works, his short pieces composed when he no longer had the energy for major works. His arrangements of poems and other texts, like his setting of The Dove Descending Breaks the Air. his short fanfares, his occasional pieces and variations, all are touched by his genius. Although his health failed drastically in his later years, and most of his business was carried on by an assistant, his creative career...