Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka) on Hyperion (Voronezh, New London)

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http://winephysicssong.com/2012/01/18/stravinskys-les-noces-svadebka-on-hyperion-voronezh-new-london/

Posted on January 18, 2012

I finally listened to my Hyperion CD of a 1990 recording of Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (Svadebka, The Wedding), with the New London Chamber Choir and Ensemble, directed by James Wood, and The Voronezh Chamber Choir, directed by Oleg Shepel. Stunning. I knew this work previously through the Bernstein/English Bach Festival Orchestra and Choir version on Deutsche Grammophon.  In that version, I found it an interesting work, but a bit hard to sit through the whole thing repeatedly.  Bernstein's version emphasized the percussive aspects.  I probably was moved to buy the Hyperion version by composer John Adams' praise for it on his blog, Hellmouth.  The NL/Voronezh version is much more nuanced and for me, balances percussiveness and aggression better with lyricism.  It has superb sound overall, with a fairly realistic, broad and deep soundstage and good hall atmospherics.  I'm not completely sure how naturally it was achieved---there are either drummers on each side of the stage, or the drums were recorded with multiple mikes and mixed with excessive stereo separation of the different drums, but it sounds good overall.  Very sweet and clear instrumental timbres, and extremely good resolution of accompanying instruments allowing subtle details of the piece to be heard.  I found some of the higher female voices to sound a bit thin and perhaps distorted at times (could be my system, or an issue with microphone preamps (distortion) or with mixing or even the actual voices (thinness)).  But overall the quality of the voices and singing, and the recording of them, is excellent.

Musically, the piece sounds like it could have been a predecessor, rather than, as it actually was, a successor, to the Rite of Spring.  It provides a more relaxed, less avant-garde setting than Rite for exploring the folk-music-based modes, and the percussiveness and somewhat dissonant chord extensions, and the occasional use of multiple modal melodies in dissonant counterpoint, that provide a lot of the musical language of Rite.  Even before reading it in the liner notes, you sense that the often arranged, and highly ritualized, Russian peasant weddings being portrayed, are a less extreme analog of the sacrifice in Rite, though with less predictably dire results, from a modern point of view.  And in the hands of this ensemble, the piece's goal of portraying the human drama of such an event (or at least, the version Stravinsky wants us to experience), is fully achieved.  Though similarities to Rite are there, the texture and mood are overall quite different.  I'd earlier not thought Noces to be even nearly on the level of the great triumvirate of Firebird, Petrushka, and the Rite, but on the strength of this recording, I now think it's close.

9.5 overall for this CD on my 10 point scale that goes to 11.