12 FEBRUARY 2000, Page 36

Charisma in spades

Alexander Waugh

IGOR STRAVINSKY by Stephen Walsh Cape, £25, pp. 698 Stravinsky could never claim to have looked attractive. He was small with rotten teeth almost from the start, rubbery lips, often glistening with spit and a dispropor- tionately large nose, described by one contemporary as 'tiny, light-haired, myopic, but with, by way of compensation, a nose of massive calibre supporting the bicycle of his glasses'. As a youth he was a dandy, in old age he looked like a clown, but what Stravinsky had in spades, like so many tal- ented and original people, was charisma. It was this charisma which took him to the centre of many artistic and social circles, first in Russia, where he was the favourite pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, admired by the musical establishment even before he had composed a single bar of any merit, and later in. France, where he came into contact with all the artistic luiminaries of his day, being befriended by Debussy, Cocteau, Gide and many others.

Now, of course, with all that charisma buried six foot deep on the beautiful Vene- tian island cemetery of S. Michele, Stravin- sky's reputation must stand or fall on the quality of the music he composed and its ability to communicate something, at least, to future generations. If we have to get into the babyish discussion of 'greatness' and were audacious enough to allot points to composers for their originality, technique, sound, colour, attractiveness and overall persuasiveness, Stravinsky would undoubt- edly on this basis find himself ranked among the top handful of 'great' composers of the western classical tradition. And so it might seem surprising that only now, nearly three decades after his death, do we get to read the first fully comprehensive and authoritative biography of this musical colossus. Part of the problem seems to lie in the places and languages involved. Stravinsky, in an attempt to play down his Russianness, once described himself as a cosmopolitan, and lived up to the sobri- quet, spending stretches of his life in Rus- sia, France, Germany, Switzerland and America. That presents a monstrous prob- lem. Russian scholars cannot get research grants to spend much time in the West, while Western scholars have been daunted by the amount of travelling, the language barriers and the general boredom of deal- ing with anybody in Russia.

Stephen Walsh, already a fluent linguist, a respected journalist and scholar, armed with research grants and the patience of Job, seems to have overcome the hurdles that have defeated so many with eloquence and ease.

Here we have only a first volume, taking us to the end of 1934, but over its 600-odd pages Walsh establishes himself as one of the most perceptive and readable living writers on classical music and as the undis- puted world authority on Stravinsky and his work. His earlier work, The Music of Stravinsky, is a paragon of how a book about something as intangible, abstract and subjective as music ought to be written. It should perhaps be read in conjunction with the present biography which, naturally enough, hardly discusses the music at all.

So what do we learn of Stravinsky's per- sonality here? He was shrewd in business, touchy and yet aloof with friends, ruthlessly ambitious and stiflingly autocratic with his family — negative traits that were thankful- ly offset by a great deal of personal charm, humour, a natural wit and an exhibitionist playfulness which made him attractive to outsiders and, to those who never knew him, finds full expression in his music. Stravinsky's character is captured in its essence in the photograph on the cover. Sitting back to front on a wooden chair, the young composer frowns at the camera with a ludicrous, highly ironic French beret stuffed at tilt on his head. Walsh is judg- mental at times. He despises Stravinsky for sending a puffed-up copy of his family tree to the Nazi authorities in order to prove that he had no Jewish ancestors, but on the whole the tone of his book is neutral and it is left to the reader to decide what to make of it all.

Only a few months ago a major mile- stone of musicology was passed with the publication of the second and final volume of David Cairns's outstanding biography of Hector Berlioz. The world had to wait ten years between volumes and it may well be that Stephen Walsh will take a decade or more to put this magnum opus to bed. If the second volume turns out to be anything like as fascinating and engrossing as the first, it will certainly be worth the wait.