The Soldiers Tale

A concert in Tysons at The Vault at Capital One Hall, billed as The Soldiers Tale with the Great Falls Philharmonic. The title echoes Igor Stravinsky's chamber work L'Histoire du soldat.

L'Histoire du soldat, usually known in English as The Soldier's Tale, was composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1918 to a text by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz. Stravinsky scored it for a narrator, a dancer, and a septet of clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, violin and double bass, so it could be performed by a small group under wartime conditions. The music mixes folk tunes, ragtime, tango and chorale-like passages, and the story follows a soldier who trades his violin to the devil in exchange for a book that predicts the future.

The Vault at Capital One Hall, the venue for this concert, hosts concerts and shows in Tysons. The program pairs the Great Falls Philharmonic with The Soldiers Tale, an ensemble named after the Stravinsky work. Listeners drawn to Stravinsky's early twentieth-century scores, or to theater-based chamber music in which spoken narration and instruments share the storytelling, will find the connection to the piece's source material direct.