Tom McGee's Blog

Work­ing through my Big Box Of Stravin­sky, I came across the 1959 record­ing of Les Noces. It’s a quite unusual piece, a bal­let with an accom­pa­ni­ment of four pianos, per­cus­sion, cho­rus and vocal soloists. Back in col­lege they put on a per­for­mance of this and it was incred­i­bly strik­ing; I can still here those piano chords at the end res­onat­ing. Still, it’s not done very often.

What’s inter­est­ing about this record­ing is the per­son­nel: the four pianists are Samuel Bar­ber, Roger Ses­sions, Lukas Foss and Aaron Cop­land. Here’s a sample:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

These four giants of mid-century Amer­i­can music are con­ducted by Stravin­sky him­self, with vocal­ists Mil­dren Allen, Regina Sar­faty, Loren Driscoll, and Robert Oliver; and Mar­garet Hillis direct­ing the choir.