# Favorite Les Noces Recordings



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

What are your favorite recordings of Stravinsky's _Les Noces_?

I didn't see many threads on the piece. I am wondering about which recordings have the best performances, which ones have the best singing, which ones are quintessentially Russian, what versions of the score have been recorded or constructed then recorded, what choreography has been on video, or just what you recommend listening to.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

I've listened to quite a few recordings of _Les Noces_ and this is my favorite. Certainly it celebrates its Russianness, and is spectacularly performed, sung, and recorded. The _Oedipus Rex_ included is very good, but probably not my favorite.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

Here are top 5 recordings:

(1) I'd suggest that you try to hear Stravinsky's conducting of the work, if you haven't already. That's essential listening, for starters. Interestingly, the 4 pianists on Stravinsky's 1959 recording were all notable American composers--Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, Aaron Copland, & Roger Sessions. The composer conducts the 1923 version of his score.

Stravinsky, 1923 version: 





Then, if you're open to hearing other versions--over time, I'd most recommend (2) a Hungaroton recording from the composer/conductor Peter Eotvos, who has recorded both the 1917 and 1923 versions of Les Noces on a single CD. This is a highly regarded recording in Stravinsky studies. In addition, if that's not enough, I'd also recommend (3) Leonard Bernstein's DG recording (with pianists Argerich, Zimerman, Katsaris, & Francesch), and (4) Robert Craft's recording on Naxos.

Eotvos, 1917 version:



Eotvos, 1923 version:

















Bernstein: 



Craft: 




Last but not least--Most recently, for a more Russian sounding version, I'd suggest that you try (5) Theodor Currentzis's Musica Aeterna recording. The chorus is all Russian speakers. Currentzis is a conductor that takes risks, so be prepared to hear some differences, interpretatively, from what you're used to.

Currentzis:


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

_Les Noces_ (1923)
:: SATB soloists, Ancerl/CzPO & Chorus [Supraphon '64]





Ancerl and company are ideal to the task, combining great temporal and rhythmic exactitude with earthy Slavic gusto and Czech piquancy.

The 1988 "Great Artists Series" CD couples it to a superb recording of _Pétrouchka_ (1947 version), while the 1994 "Stamp" series CD and the "Gold Edition" CD couple it to superb recordings of Cantata and Mass.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

Glad to see Currentzis getting a nod here, his is my favorite of the ones I've heard. I'm fond of the Tchaikovsky _Violin Concerto_ it's paired with too. Currentzis has proven to be extremely divisive, in certain circles even more so than K****** or F********** (though not here...). It seems one either loves or hates most of his recordings, without much middle ground. I haven't heard Stravinsky's recording though, I'll have to check that out.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Josquin13 said:


> Here are top 5 recordings:
> 
> (1) I'd suggest that you try to hear Stravinsky's conducting of the work, if you haven't already. That's essential listening, for starters. Interestingly, the 4 pianists on Stravinsky's 1959 recording were all notable American composers--Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, Aaron Copland, & Roger Sessions. The composer conducts the 1923 version of his score.
> 
> ...


I am interested in the Eötvös recording. I wish it wasn't so hard to find on CD.

Wikipedia (no idea if this is correct coming from there) says that Stravinsky had a short score for the work in 1917. Did Stravinsky himself finish the orchestration, or did someone else expand it later?


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

adriesba writes, "Wikipedia (no idea if this is correct coming from there) says that Stravinsky had a short score for the work in 1917. Did Stravinsky himself finish the orchestration, or did someone else expand it later?

Yes and no, and yes. It had a convoluted gestation (almost as complicated as Faure's Requiem). My understanding is that there are two versions prior to 1917 where Stravinsky had much grander ideas about how to orchestrate the work. Originally, he'd intended on a full orchestra of about 150 musicians!--much in the same vein as La Sacre, but abandoned the idea, I gather as impractical.

Then, he finished his first complete draft in 1917 (which is actually the 3rd version), where he scored the work for woodwinds, brass, strings, harp, piano, harpsichord & cimbalom (a Hungarian folk instrument). This 1917 version is sometimes called the "orchestra version". Eotvos recorded it in 1987 (coupled with the final 1923 version).

Then, Stravinsky opted to rescore the work in a more scaled down 4th version in 1919, apparently so that Les Noces would fit better into the "neoclassical" movement in Paris. For this 'stripped down' version he used only two cimbalom, a harmonium, pianola, & percussion. However, I'm not sure if Stravinsky completed the orchestration for this version or not. I seem to recall that he had abandoned it due to the unusual instruments not working well with the voices (but I can't find any information on that). Yet I see that Pierre Boulez "premiered" the 1919 version in Paris in 1981. So perhaps Boulez completed the orchestration? (I've not heard Boulez's version). In addition, Robert Craft also recorded the 1919 version in 1973--8 years prior to Boulez: 



. So, the date of its "premiere" appears to be open to interpretation.

Then, Stravinsky changed his mind yet again--for the last time, before finally settling on the four pianos and six percussionists used in the 1923 version, which was premiered in Paris under the baton of Ernest Ansermet.

So, there are essentially three different versions of Les Noces--dating from 1917, 1919, & 1923--plus the two pre-1917 versions that I don't believe we have any drafts for (?). & I gather we only know about these earlier versions because Stravinsky later spoke about what his original intentions for the work had been prior to 1917.

Phew!, I hope I've gotten all that correct.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Josquin13, I think you nailed it. It's one of the most complex gestational histories of any of Stravinsky's works.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Thank you very much, Josquin13!
That definitely helped resolve my confusion.


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## perdido34 (Mar 11, 2015)

Bychkov, Orchestre de Paris


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I like Stravinsky's recording in the Works Of Igor box. It's such an interesting piece of music.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

> In addition, Robert Craft also recorded the 1919 version in 1973--8 years prior to Boulez:
> 
> 
> 
> . So, the date of its "premiere" appears to be open to interpretation.


Craft only recorded two sections, the first two, from the 1919 edition, so Boulez may still be able to claim a premier of the entire work. Also included by Craft is the 1917 version in its entirety.

View attachment 137892


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Is Boulez's recording on CD (at reasonable price anyway)? I don't see it on streaming, and I don't recognize the label on the stuff I'm finding. Looks pricey.


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## pianola (Jan 5, 2021)

*The Pianola in Les Noces Villageoises*



SanAntone said:


> Craft only recorded two sections, the first two, from the 1919 edition, so Boulez may still be able to claim a premier of the entire work. Also included by Craft is the 1917 version in its entirety.


Just to set the record straight, I made the piano roll for the Boulez première in 1981, and I drove from London to Paris with my Pianola to play it. I met Robert Craft in London in the late 1970s, and I know that he used a pianist or pianists to play the pianola part in his recording. He made no particular secret of that, and I should say that he was kind enough to help fund a player piano concert at Alice Tully Hall in New York, for the 75th anniversary of the Rite of Spring in 1988. My colleague, Denis Hall, and I took two pianolas by air to the US, and we gave the US premières of the Pleyela Rite, and Petrushka as well. By a strange coincidence my own surname, Lawson, was also the maiden name of Robert Craft's mother, and I still have a handwritten letter from her, with flowers that she had pressed into a corner of the paper, worrying over her son's career decision to act as Stravinsky's assistant!

The notion of premières and world premières is more of a philosophical concept than a dictionary definition. The words get used in order to advertise concerts, or to provide a spurious certainty to musicological lists. Since the pianola (foot-pedalled, and with perforated music rolls) was such an integral part of the instrumentation for Les Noces 1919, I think it's fair enough to confer the honour upon the June 1981 performance in Paris, though, like a knighthood, it really isn't all that important! It was only broadcast live, by the way, and the in-house recording by the ORTF was never used, because Boulez was not happy with the baritone who stood in for the indisposed John Shirley-Quirk. I do have a copy of the recording, as it happens, but it was kindly provided for my use by a French musician who worked at the ORTF, so I think I should not distribute it further. So you will have to take my word that we all remained musically in time with each other! Pierre Boulez remained an occasional friend, and he generously acted as my referee for a Leverhulme Fellowship in the late 1980s, in order for me to study Stravinsky's player piano correspondence at the Paul Sacher-stiftung in Basel.

Since 1981 the version with pianola (and cymbaloms, two-manual harmonium and percussion) has been performed a goodly number of times. The original music, consisting of the first two tableaux, must have been privately transcribed by Craft himself for his own recording, because the original manuscript is incomplete, with Stravinsky's handwritten indications of where the various instruments are to repeat earlier sections, and so on. The British composer, Colin Matthews, prepared performance parts for the London Sinfonietta and David Atherton at the Royal Festival Hall in early 1981, but Atherton similarly chose to use live pianists, probably assuming that a pianola player would be unable to follow a conductor's beat. I have to admit that his choice was rather irritating, since I lived only five miles or so from the RFH!

At any rate, Pierre Boulez, whose Gallic wit and sense of adventure prevailed over Atherton's Yorkshire solidity, took the plunge and so the world première of the 1919 version took place roughly five miles away from the world première of the 1923 version. I should think Igor might have enjoyed that idea.

During the remainder of the Twentieth Century, Les Noces 1919 was also performed in London (QEH with John Carewe), Bern, Basel, Wetzikon (near Zürich), and Leuven in Belgium. The last of those was only two months away from the new millennium (beginning in 2001, of course), and the importance for me of that particular performance outweighs even the excitement with Boulez, because I met my wife there, who was singing with the New London Chamber Choir, conducted by James Wood. Our own Noces took place around four years later, and again I reckon Igor was smiling.

In 2009 Les Noces 1919 underwent another new adventure, in that the remaining two tableaux were re-scored from the 1923 version, by the late Dutch composer, Theo Verbey. I would say that Meneer Verbey did a very fine job, and over the years it has been easy enough to transcribe his pianola part on to two new music rolls. However, Verbey's intention was to use not a pianola, but a modern computerised player piano system, manufactured by the QRS Company in the USA, and controlled by MIDI, or at least providing a MIDI output, so that the conductor and all the other musicians would be able to follow the piano. Automatic player pianos do not have the same subtlety of tempo manipulation as an old-style pianola, and so the responsibility for remaining in time is transferred to everyone other than the player piano. This really only works in music that is adjudged to be mechanical-sounding, particularly from the tempo point of view. Personally I would argue that Les Noces is not an eyeballs out express train, but rather a country wedding looked back on with some nostalgia by one of the many dispossessed Russians after the Revolution in 1917.

Whatever the case, there is not really any such thing as authenticity (any more than there are definitive world premières), and everyone is free to make their own choices. One can still find traces on the web of the performances given in Holland between 2009 and 2011, organised by a fine Dutch percussionist, Peppie Wiersma, and outstandingly directed and designed by Marc and Helma Pantus. Although the player piano was too insistent and unremittingly regular for my taste, the performances were given with a great deal of enthusiasm, in outdoor surroundings, and with the audience more like wedding guests than besuited concertgoers.

In the end the work came back to the conccert hall as well, and James Wood conducted the RIAS Kammerchor at the Berlin Festival in 2013. For that concert we used two Pianolas and two Steinway grands, and the transfer from one roll to the next was no more intricate than a percussionist walking from one xylophone to another. In a sense, that has perhaps been the most "authentic" musical performance to date, in that Stravinsky's initial enquiries in 1917 with regard to making music rolls drew forth the reply from the Orchestrelle Company in London that two rolls and two Pianolas would be necessary. It's noticeable that the instrumental accompaniment at the beginning of Tableau 3 is very simple, allowing the cymbaloms to take over a few bars of music scored by Theo Verbey for the Pianola, without any great change in timbre, thus covering the necessary slide towards the adjacent Pianola stool.

I have one general observation about Les Noces, and I'm grateful for the chance of sharing it here. It seems to me that the choruses are often too large, and the vocal soloists too strong. It's a chamber work, and with the exception of the player piano running at an insistent speed and a very restricted dynamic range, the Dutch performances seem to me to have have worked very well. The balance between voices and accompaniment sounds best as a meeting of equals. As we all know, it was originally intended as a theatre piece, with the intention that the singers, dancers and instrumentalists should all be on stage, and it was the inability of Pleyel and the Belgian inventor whom they commissioned, Georges Cloetens, to get the two keyboard-operated cymbaloms ready in time which forced Stravinsky's hand and resulted in the change of instrumentation to the four pianos (or rather two Pleyel double grands in the première performances). It's a great pity that more concert organisations have not taken up the 1919 challenge.

If you have read as far as this, you deserve a slight reward. I do have an off-air recording of the Les Noces performance we gave at the Philharmonie in Berlin in 2013. The recording balance tends to work against the keyboard instruments, but nevertheless it's a memorable performance. If you can work out how to contact me at the website that I write, I'll send you a private web link, but only on an individual basis, so that it's more like sharing an old radio recording with a friend, rather than a wholesale upload to YouTube.

Keep safe!


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