The Choir Sunday 27th Feb

[Threni]

Now then. On your marks. I see there is a single "As New" copy of the Eotvos CD currently available via mazon.co.uk. I have my copy backed up in at least 2 locations, just to be sure.

Yes I have this cd in my collection, but that's all it is really I don't find it a satisfying recording of the work, the only one available. Although like I've said there is that craft version on YouTube which will hopefully become available once again in the not too distant future.

What is yr favourite recording of the work? I find stravinskys own very rhythmic but I also like harmonia mundis release. I don't find Gergievs very good either! A hard work to perform well. Birmingham opera company did a fantastic production last year ass was mentioned at the time.

[Bryn]

On the whole, my favourite is the James Wood, but Bernstein's has its stregths even if the Russian is said to be not as idomatic as it might be.

Bt the way, I have now grabbed the concert with the Stucky from YouTube. The audio component turns out to be only 96kbps aac. I have normalised and trancoded that to a VBR lame 'mp3' with a bottom limit of 96kbps and a top rate of 320kbps. It came out with an ABR of 156kbps. Better than nothing for sure.

[Roehre]

Roehre, in the notes for the Eotvos recording, A. Wilheim states that the 1917 version (the only extant version with orchesta, as far as I am aware), was completed by Stravinsky. That is the version I was intending when refering to "full orchestra". "Chamber Orchestra" might have been a more accurate description, though my aim was to differentiate if from the 1919 version with cimbaloms, player-piano etc. and the 1923 version for 4 pianos and persussion.

Bryn, I've got that CD and know Wilheim's notes. However, Eric Walter White's Stravinsky (2nd edition, p.254) states that the giant-orchestra's version's score only consists of "only a few pages". Regarding "your" "full orchestra" version: "This orchestra included two keyed bugles or flugelhorns as well. But although the first two scenes were instrumented on these lines in 1919...".
The same apllies for the "cymbalom-version".
But admittedly EWW's description is not completely straightforwardly stating which parts of which instrumentation were eventually prepared by the composer. Therefore Wilheim might be correct, but I doubt whether he is.
Whatever, I like the orchestral version.

[Bryn]

Ah, but Roehre, was not EWW refering to an even earlier plan, for an orchestra of Rite of Spring proportions? That is what I understood to have only had a few reached the stage of a few sketches. I will try and search out the sleeve of my old Italian CBS LP of the Craft versions, They might help. I will also have a look in the Walsh's "A Creative Spring" and Vera Stravinsky & Robert Craft's "Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents". I'm off to bed now though.

[Roehre]

Ah, but Roehre, was not EWW refering to an even earlier plan, for an orchestra of Rite of Spring proportions? That is what I understood to have only had a few reached the stage of a few sketches. I will try and search out the sleeve of my old Italian CBS LP of the Craft versions, They might help. I will also have a look in the Walsh's "A Creative Spring" and Vera Stravinsky & Robert Craft's "Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents". I'm off to bed now though.

That's the giant-orchestra version I mentioned, and which Stravinsky stopped working on after "a couple of pages" (EWW).
IS himself unfortunately only states (in his Expositions and Developments, the Dover edition,[ pp.114-118 are about Les Noces]) that he completed the first tableau only "for an orchestra of the size of Le Sacre-du-Printemps" (p.118). No mentioning whatsoever of the other eventually not realised instrumentations.
In the Exhibition Catalogue Strawinsky. Sein Nachlass. Sein Bild. (re the exhibition by the Paul Sacher Stiftung and the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1984 following the acquisition of IS's archives by Sacher) it is stated, that there are 4 versions (catalogue no.34, p.42).
1: the "Sacre-sized" orchestration: 1 Tableau.
2: the "orchestral"-version: Partitur-Fragment zum 1. Bild (score fragment for the first Tableau)
3: the "Cymbalom" version: 1st and 2nd Tableau
4: the score as it is known now (complete 4 tableaux).

Therefore I suspect that Wilheim is overstating the extent of Stravinsky's involvement in the orchestral version as used by Eotvos. Unfortunately I cannot check the programme notes of the Amsterdam performance, as somehow I lost them following moving house Note that in Basle there seems to be only a score for the first tableau, not even (as EWW implies) for the 1st and 2nd.

[Threni]

Good research Roehre!

[Bryn]

Here are images of the relevant passage from Vera Stravinsky & Robert Craft's "Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents":





As you will see, Tableau 4 is said to be the first to be orchestrated, followed by 1 and 2. It would appear that uncertainty only really pertains to Tableau 3, which the composer may, or may not have fully orchestrated himself. Walsh appears to be of no great help in the matter.

[Roehre]

Here are images of the relevant passage from Vera Stravinsky & Robert Craft's "Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents":

As you will see, Tableau 4 is said to be the first to be orchestrated, followed by 1 and 2. It would appear that uncertainty only really pertains to Tableau 3, which the composer may, or may not have fully orchestrated himself. Walsh appears to be of no great help in the matter.

Tableau 4 is apparently the bit which has been "Sacre-"scored (that's the score which has been transferred from the now defunct Rychenbach-Stiftung in Winterthur to the Sacher-Stiftung in Basle, following the transfer of the Stravinsky archives to there)
Tableau 3 IMO only exists in short score as well as in the eventual "4-piano-"orchestration in which Les Noces eventually was published (based on the manuscripts in Basle).
Of tableaux 1 and 2 it is still not clear which instrumentation is meant: the "chamber"-orchestral or the "cymbalom"-one?
Based on the Basle-archives I'd say only the "cymbalom"-version is meant.

But as said below already: EWW says that both tableaux were orchestrated for both the "chamber-"orhestra as well as the "cymbalom-"versions.
So: how many Tableaux of the Eotvos-performance where therefore orchestrated by IS himself? Two (nos.1-2) or one only (no.1)?


PS: how did you manage to get two pages of this volumnious book scanned?
I only would manage 1 page a time on my scanner.

[Roehre]

Les Noces ...Stravinsky himself conducted a recording of Les Noces using the English libretto, in 1959, in which the four pianists were Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Roger Sessions.

I came across a picture of the rehearsal for this recording (16 dec 1959), with the four composer/pianists, and Loren Driscoll (the tenor-soloist), Stravinsky conducting, Craft observing, in:
Robert CRAFT. A Stravinsky scrapbook 1940-1971. Thames and Hudson, 1983, p.87

[DracoM]

Just wondering if AJ's researchers have done as well as you guys!