More on Les Noces

Last month, I reviewed San Francisco Symphony playing Steven Stucky's orchestral arrangement of Stravinsky's great ballet score Les Noces. Stravinsky struggled over how, exactly, to orchestrate the work, and in 1923 eventually settled on four pianos and percussion. But before that, in 1917, he created a version for woodwinds, brass, strings, harp, piano, harpsichord & cimbalom. In the 1980s, Peter Eötvös recorded this version as well as the 1923 version.

A friend was kind enough to lend me his copy - I'll probably buy it eventually - and it makes interesting listening. It is considerably more astringent and Stravinsky-like than Stucky's too-soft orchestration, and of course it's by Stravinsky and sounds and works better than the Stucky. It's not entirely successfully; the trumpet playing what eventually became piano glissandos just isn't as good as the pianos, for example. If you want to hear this version, and it is certainly interesting, someone has uploaded it to a discussion of different Les Noces recordings. One of the respondents in the thread cites Karel Ancerl's recording, and I think that is indeed very good.

Today, though, I gave a listen to Stravinsky's own recording of the work, made in the 1960s and in English. I like it a lot; the composer keeps it moving, the soloists really understand the work, as does the chorus. There's a sense of reverence in some of the more religious bits that is unusual to hear. It definitely gets wilder as the celebration goes on. The soloists are distinctive and have character, which is more important than having beautiful voices. The recording is in English, and while I think that overall Les Noces sounds better in Russian, there are advantages to having the chorus and soloists performing in their native language, and being able to understand the text.

I have a couple of minor caveats about Stravinsky's recording: the chorus is small enough that I can pick out some of the individual voices, and I wish the pianos were more forward in the mix. There are a couple of moments of imprecision in the piano playing that made me think that maybe the pianists hadn't played the work a lot.

This is...probably the case. I had to look it up on line - the booklet for the big Stravinsky Edition set isn't in the box - but Stravinsky had a classy lineup of pianists for the recording, none of whom made their living primarily by playing the piano: Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, and Roger Sessions.