There isn't a phase of Stravinsky's endlessly protean development that has not spread its influence on succeeding generations of composers, for he dominated 20th-century music in a unique way.
The works he composed in the 50s, when his style was shifting from neo-classicism to his very personal version of serial technique, have left their mark on history in a less conspicuous but no less significant way. It was a selection of small-scale works from that period, all written around the very different landmarks of The Rake's Progress and the ballet Agon, that provided the theme of the London Sinfonietta's triple-decker programme on Sunday.
They were interleaved with works by three British composers, all of whom, in platform interviews with the Stravinsky biographer Stephen Walsh during the concert, declared a debt to Stravinsky of one kind or another.
Knussen's continuing advocacy of this still difficult and unfamiliar music is remarkable. Though a work like the Septet, literally on the cusp of neo-classicism and serialism, responds to a standard Stravinskian approach, the Three Shakespeare Songs (intelligently sung here by Mary King) and the little memorial pieces like the Double Canon and the Epitaphium need a studied coolness and care to bring out their hard-edged qualities, which was what these Sinfonietta performances provided.
As well as a revival of Geoffrey King-Gomez's Magritte Weather, there should have been two new British works, both Sinfonietta commissions, to set off this rather austere sequence. Knussen's own score was not completed in time; instead the Sinfonietta gave lustrous performances of his Ophelia Dances and the Two Organa.
Julian Anderson's Alhambra Fantasy did materialise, and a remarkable score it turned out to be. Though it was apparently inspired by a visit to the Alhambra palace in Granada, and elements of Moorish and Sephardic music are woven into the score along with Spanish folk songs collected by Lorca, there's no trace of picture-postcard realism about Anderson's piece. It spits out ideas at a dizzyingly rapid pace in its first half, all vividly coloured and driven with irrepressible rhythmic energy, then slows dramatically and revisits the same material at a more leisurely pace. The structure may not quite work - the idea of a highly compressed series of variations followed by a single lengthier one is perhaps more intellectually than aurally satisfying, and the piece runs out of steam a little towards the end - but there is so much that is startling and immediate about the writing that such nit-picking seems beside the point.
