Strictly Ballet

Les Noces is a screaming, shrieking, flat-out masterpiece. Leonard Bernstein himself has referred to it as Stravinsky's greatest work, and listening to this incendiary performance, it's awfully hard to disagree. Scored for voices, four pianos, and percussion, the work provided the inspiration for the entire career of Orff (of Carmina Burana fame), but it's so much better as sheer music than anything Orff wrote. And what a cast! The pianists for this performance include Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Cyprien Katsaris, and Homero Francesch, four certified virtuoso performers, while the singers of the English Bach Festival Chorus really cover themselves with glory in both works. A stunner.

It is only a short while since I reviewed a suite of dances from Rameau's opera, Nais. Now, hard on the heels of that disc (also conducted by McGegan, Harmonia Mundi, 7/95) comes a reissue of the entire work, albeit with judicious cuts. Nais was commissioned to celebrate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and first performed the following year. Thus it was a vocal counterpart to Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks, both pieces marking the conclusion of the War of the Austrian Succession. The present recording was made in 1980 following performances at London's Old Vic Theatre and at Versailles under the auspices of Lina Lalandi's enterprising English Bach Festival.

In spite of the French title, and the conductor known for his interest in period performance, this is not the French Orphee et Eurydice of 1774; it is a different 'period version', the period in question being not Gluck's but that of Berlioz (or, as we shall see, nearly so). In 1859, Berlioz, always a passionate admirer of Gluck, prepared a version of the opera for the contralto Pauline Viardot. The alto version of the opera was of course the original Italian one, of 1762, for a castrato, but Berlioz wanted to incorporate some of the changes Gluck had made in 1774 and to use a French text. His compromise version has served as the basis for most revivals of the opera, in whatever language, from then until relatively recent times, though its four-act structure has rarely been followed.