Stravinsky: Les Noces (1919) / Ravel: Bolero
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IGOR STRAVINSKY / MAURICE RAVEL
Stravinsky: Les Noces (1919) / Ravel: Bolero
Ensemble Aedes, Mathieu Romano, Les Siècles
[ Aparte / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 7 April 2023
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In 1914 Stravinsky was more than ever taken up by his interest in pagan Russia and its folk rituals. He worked on the composition of Les Noces, intended for the Ballets Russes, until 1923. These "choreographed scenes with music and voices" represent, in four tableaux, the Russian folk wedding ritual. Sober, stylised, razor-sharp, Stravinsky's music combines rhythmic brutality with an incantatory force, evoking both the timelessness and the inexorability of that ritual. There were several attempts at different instrumentations of the work. Here Mathieu Romano, Aedes and Les Siècles present the world premiere recording of the full 1919 version (completed in 2007 by Theo Verbey), written for an ensemble of percussion instruments, two Hungarian cymbaloms, a harmonium, a pianola, and voices.
The same unusual instrumentation, clear, incisive, precise, is used for Robin Melchior's arrangement of Ravel's Boléro: an unexpected and amazing, suave, and totally successful.
"Hearing Stravinsky's long-desired but originally unfulfilled version of Les Noces - so compellingly realised between Verbey and these fine musicians - is worth the price of entry alone." BBC Music Recording of the Month March 2023
"They make a superb case for what was after all the initial conception of Les Noces - leaner, earthier and more economical than the later familiar version, a sound world that seems to match the folk-inspired vocal writing even more convincingly." The Guardian
Tracks:
Ne vesiolaïa… traditional Russian folk song
IGOR STRAVINSKY: Les Noces 1919 version (world premiere recording)
MAURICE RAVEL:
Bolero arr. Robin Melchior
