Lebrecht Weekly | Soulima Stravinsky (Nimbus)

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Igor Stravinsky was too much of an egotist to be a good parent. He was a brute to his first wife, Yekaterina, who was also his first cousin, obliging her to pay a monthly stipend to his mistress, Vera Sudeikina. Relations with his children atrophied in the course of these humiliations.

Soulima, his third child, never stood much of a chance to find an independent existence. Tutored by his father’s acolyte Nadia Boulanger, he augmented his attempts at being a composer with playing his father’s fairly undemanding piano pieces. In 1939, when Igor and Vera moved to the US, Soulima joined the French army. Unable to make a living in post-War Europe, he sailed for the US in an attempt to re-establish his filial ties. Stravinsky helped find him a post at the University of Illinois, where he taught until 1978. He died in a Florida home in 1994.

What we have here is a remarkable pair of recordings, previously unreleased, that Soulima made in Wales in 1975 and 1977. One consists of solo piano pieces by his father. The other is Soulima’s own children’s pieces, based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. His playing is competent, unexceptional, humourless. The Igor pieces are small chips off a daunting old block and there is none of the wit that Igor flashed when playing the piano. Soulima seems to try too hard not to offence.

His own music is warmer, livelier, more colourful. He must have told stories of Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty to his own infant son and their realisation as piano suites have a distinctive charm. Definitely worth hearing.

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