Stravinsky's dogmatic approach to performance practice focuses on a metrically-strict style that attempts to eliminate expressive devices by the performer. He even referred to performers as "executants" in order to emphasize a rigid manner of execution over individual interpretation. Stravinsky established the executant-style requirements in contemporary discourse, but more importantly, during his ten-year career as solo pianist in performances of the neoclassical Concerto for Piano and Winds (1924). Reviews of the Concerto appropriated the composer's objectivist language and helped to institute the modernist lexicon; but the reviews also illustrate a conflict between the ostensibly non-emotional principles and the vibrant performances listeners actually experienced.

This study attempts to reconcile the executant-style of performance with an emotional experience triggered by disruptive elements of structure. I investigate reception from the European and American premieres (1924-25) of the Concerto featuring Stravinsky as pianist, as a way to illustrate his enormous influence on contemporary discourse and performance practice. An analytic approach of the Concerto will illustrate disruptive elements, namely, the phrasal and harmonic irregularity caused by metrical displacement and tonal distortion. I will extract anti-metrical layers caused by metrical displacement to highlight phrasal irregularity; and through a pitch-reductive process, will reveal unconventional contrapuntal frameworks to illustrate how Stravinsky's music references tonal gestures but is ultimately unable to sustain harmonic prolongation. This analysis exemplifies the surface-oriented nature of Stravinsky's music which has perceptual implications for performance.

Although the executant-style of performance appears to correspond to modern objectivist esthetics, Pieter van den Toorn states that metrical precision in the performance practice of Stravinsky's music is motivated by structure, specifically, to maximally highlight irregular changes in alignment due to metrical displacement. I propose that disruptive elements of structure in fact generate the executant-style; in other words, performers will counter a highly irregular surface with a highly regular execution. This is because Stravinsky's disruptive surface lacks the structure to systematically elicit expressive devices and therefore, will curtail the performer's impulse to slow down. In spite of the criticism that the executant-style reduces the performer to little more than an automaton, I suggest that disruption produces a highly-attentive state in the performer which I consider to be an emotional experience.