Stravinsky Attacks!





















At last night's post-Minnesota Orchestra concert (a smart program of Gabrielli brass music, a Mozart Serenade, Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" with the James Sewell Ballet, and Le Sacre du Printemps) Q and A session with conductor Osmo Vänskä, a man raised his hand to congratulate Vänskä on a memorable rendition of Stravinsky's masterpiece, and report to him and the audience that he had once been bitten by Stravinsky himself. Literally. Bitten with teeth.
He didn't give his name, but he said he had been a doctor in New York City in the late 60s and early 70s. One of his patients was the ailing Stravinsky (probably a couple months before he died when he had moved from LA to New York City).
Stravinsky was in for one of the many surgical procedures of the painful last years of his life, and after coming out of the anastaesia in a state of irritated delirium, bit the doctor's hand as hard as he could. This only goes to show the unstoppable tenacity and animalistic lifeforce that the tiny but muscular Stravinsky had throughout his life that allowed him to sport six-pack abs in his early 50s, compose works of genius into his late 80s and nearly make it to 90 after a life of smoking and drinking like the Exile on Main Street era Keith Richards.

The doctor related that Stravinsky must have felt sorry for his act of semi-conscious violence, as he gladly signed a LP before he left the hospital.