Stravinsky - Les Noces · Mass · Cantata
Our Price: $108.16
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $74.95 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Music CD Cover
Composer: Igor StravinskyConductor: Daniel Reuss
Orchestra: RIAS Kammerchor
Orchestra: musikFabrik
Performer: Carolyn Sampson
Performer: Susan Parry
Performer: Vsevolod Grivnov
Performer: Jan Kobow
Performer: Maxim Mikhailov
Performer: Peter Veale
Edition: Music CD
Format: Hybrid SACD - DSD, Import
CD Release Date: 2006-10-10
Music Label: Harmonia Mundi (France)
Free Music Notes for Stravinsky - Les Noces · Mass · Cantata
Free Music Review: STRAVINSKY AND CHRISTIANITY
Hit: 5 Stars
If my experience is anything to go by, these are fairly unfamiliar Stravinsky works. In that case I would like, if I may, to try to get the attention of a few newcomers for what I believe to be very interesting music, very well performed and presented. Les Noces is a setting of various traditional Russian wedding songs, and Stravinsky took 10 years over its composition. He had originally projected a mega-orchestra on the lines of the Rite of Spring, but what he ended up with was four pianos and percussion. The work is mainly for chorus (naturally enough), and there are the four usual solo parts. The music is no more concerned with illustrating its texts than the music to The Ball of Kirriemuir is. It is all about pounding repetitive rhythm from start to finish, and I can only assume that it had a strong influence on the Carmina Burana and Catulli Carmina of Orff. The Mass is a short setting, about the usual length of a Mozart mass, some examples of which apparently prompted this work's composition. It was written to no commission, it preceded The Rake's Progress, and the Cantata followed that, seemingly answering to a need Stravinsky felt to compose another work to an English text. Stravinsky found his texts among Auden's marginalia to the book of The Rake, but the Lyke-Wake Dirge is so reminiscent of the Scottish ballad in Britten's Serenade that I would be amazed if Stravinsky was not influenced by that too. He must have known it, and he surely knew also that of all native English-speaking composers Britten was the model among models to follow when it came to literary discernment and instinct for what does and what does not go to music (e.g. emphatically not Housman in my own opinion). The Cantata has parts for soprano and tenor solos as well as the chorus, the Mass is for chorus only, and each work is accompanied by a small chamber band.
There is a strong linking thread of Christianity along the three compositions. In Les Noces this is mainly a matter of invoking for the wedding couple the blessings of the Virgin and sundry saints, including someone addressed as `Cosmo'. As this confessor is in the familiar company of Damian, I suppose that he must really be St Cosmas, as indeed he is in the Russian. Stravinsky was himself Orthodox, but as Orthodox orthodoxy forbids instrumental accompaniments to music sung in church, this Mass is specifically Catholic, rather than the Orthodox Liturgy as set a cappella by Tchaikovsky. Stravinsky told Evelyn Waugh (who was more Catholic than the Pope) that it was intended for church performance and not the concert hall, and it was predictably premiered at a concert under the baton of Ansermet. Nevertheless the style the composer intended, partly as a semi-reproof to Mozart, is captured with dignity and sung with solemn beauty here.
The Cantata is exceptionally interesting, as well as being exceptionally good music. The composer himself tells us that the structure of the poems was a structure that lent itself obviously to musical setting, as indeed it does with its various refrains, notably the repeated `And Christe receive thye saule', so reminiscent of Britten. One feature that continues to surprise me given this composer's ethnicity is his lengthy and relaxed inclusion of Catholic texts that have given offence down the centuries by blaming Jews for the suffering of Christ. There are two solo parts this time, soprano and tenor, and the soprano is Carolyn Sampson, as in Les Noces. The four solo parts in Les Noces are only offshoots of the chorus or providing antiphonal responses to the chorus. This time she has a larger role, but the main solo spot is the tenor's long number on track 13. This is performed with distinction by Jan Kobow, who had not had any part in Les Noces. Carolyn Sampson likewise does very well, so do her colleagues in Les Noces, and the chorus gives me no grounds for complaint, indeed quite the reverse, in all three works.
The recording has been arranged thoughtfully, and I support the decisions that the producer made. You may find the voices a little backward in Les Noces, but if this is to be counted a fault I would call it at least a good fault. Overly forward voices would have been catastrophic, and the way the piece is presented here we catch the clean linear instrumental sound so characteristic of Stravinsky and so central to the interpretation of most of his work. There is no corresponding issue in the Mass, and I love the solemn wind sound; and all seems well to me again in the Cantata.
There is some good and helpful comment in the liner note, provided you can put up with its pretentiousness. Speaking for myself, I have long since read everything I want to read and more regarding Stravinsky's supposed changes of style and idiom, but I am resigned to having it doled out to me again, and it is small price to pay for an out-of-the-way treasure like this issue. It may also be obtuseness on my own part, but I would have loved to be told the significance of the `Cancrizans' (sc `crabwise') Cantus in the Cantata, and I would happily have traded large amounts of M Robert Coheur's Gallic waffle for this simple bit of information. The set is also imaginatively designed, with the thick, polyglot and expensive-looking booklet (partly in colour) glued into the fold-over package, a very good alternative to jewel-boxes. The booklet can presumably be removed, but when I was about to do that I asked myself why, so it remains in situ. A distinguished set altogether.
Classical Music CDs
Music Genres
Top music charts in Classical Music CDs
Winterscapesby London Philharmonic
Prophetic Voice; Published: 2000-07; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $2.74
Price in other shops:
The Queen, the Bear, and the Bumblebeeby Dini Petty
Childrens Group; Published: 2001-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $13.40
Price in other shops:
Classical Kids - Beethoven Lives Upstairs CdrRelease date: 2000-04-05; Music CD
Best price: $25.98
Tchaikovsky (Life and Works (Naxos))by Malcolm Sinclair, Jeremy Siepmann
Naxos; Published: 2003-11; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $35.99
![Jose Carreras - Jubileum Concert [VHS] Image](/images/Jose-Carreras-Jubileum-Concert-VHS-1584481471-X.jpg){kind=small}
Jose Carreras - Jose Carreras - Jubileum Concert [VHS]Sling Shot; Release date: 2000-04-18; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.87
Price in other shops:
![Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker / Nureyev, Park, Royal Ballet [VHS] Image](/images/Tchaikovsky-The-Nutcracker-Nureyev-Park-Royal-Ballet-VHS-156127092X-X.jpg){kind=small}
Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker / Nureyev, Park, Royal Ballet [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1997-09-09; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.94
Price in other shops:
![Lonely Town Lonley Street / Sergeant's Early Dream [VHS] Image](/images/Lonely-Town-Lonley-Street-Sergeant-Early-Dream-VHS-1561270857-X.jpg){kind=small}
Rambert Dance Company - Lonely Town Lonley Street / Sergeant's Early Dream [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1997-10-28; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $24.99
Price in other shops:
Winter Music: Composing the Northby John Luther Adams
Wesleyan; Published: 2004-11-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $23.62
Price in other shops:
![Puccini - La Fanciulla del West / Santi, Domingo, Neblett, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS] Image](/images/Puccini-La-Fanciulla-del-West-Santi-Domingo-Neblett-Royal-Opera-Covent-Garden-VHS-0769720382-X.jpg){kind=small}
Puccini - La Fanciulla del West / Santi, Domingo, Neblett, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1999-05-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Verdi - Falstaff / Giulini, Bruson, Ricciarelli, Nucci, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS] Image](/images/Verdi-Falstaff-Giulini-Bruson-Ricciarelli-Nucci-Royal-Opera-Covent-Garden-VHS-0769720358-X.jpg){kind=small}
Verdi - Falstaff / Giulini, Bruson, Ricciarelli, Nucci, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1999-05-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $12.95
Price in other shops: