The Hopkins Center for the Performing Arts will present the world premiere of a provocative new musical and dramatic production tonight at 8 p.m. in Spaulding Auditorium.
The Moscow-based Pokrovsky Ensemble will perform its interpretation of Igor Stravinsky's "Les Noces" ("The Wedding") which is being released as a compact disc this week on Elektra-Nonesuch.
Music Professor Ted Levin served as the recording's executive producer, and with Dmitri Pokrovsky, created a new English translation of Stravinsky's Russian libretto.
The Pokrovsky Ensemble's performance of Stravinsky's work contains several striking innovations. "Les Noces" is scored for four pianos, percussion, and singers. Pokrovsky, who founded and directs the 20-member ensemble, decided to replace the four acoustic pianos with computer-driven Yamaha disc clavier pianos in order to achieve the sort of motoric, rhythmic precision that Stravinsky had sought in the 1920s by using player pianos.
"The Yamaha disc clavier is the player piano of the late 20th century," said Pokrovsky during a break from intensive rehearsals which began Monday, the day after the ensemble's arrival from Moscow. Following its Hopkins Center appearance, the group will move on to New York City, where it will perform a sold-out concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
"Les Noces" is typically performed by ensembles of classically trained vocalists, however Pokrovsky's version will provide the audience with an authentic Russian musical experience. His singers learned to sing in Russian villages instead of conservatories, and they bring to their performance the earthy sound of the villagers who were their teachers.
Pokrovsky believes that his interpretation of "Les Noces" represents a fundamental breakthrough in the understanding of Stravinsky's masterpiece. Stravinsky had long denied that he employed actual Russian folk songs in "Les Noces." In his autobiography, Stravinsky wrote: "I borrow[ed] nothing from folk pieces ... The recreation of a country wedding ... which I never had the chance either to see or listen to ... absolutely didn't enter my mind."
But Pokrovsky has provided evidence to the contrary. Traveling to remote villages in the south and west of Russia, he and members of his ensemble, at times accompanied by Levin, tracked down some of the very same folk wedding songs that Stravinsky denied having heard.
"In one village, we sat across from a peasant woman as she sang to us the exact same song that Stravinsky used to open "Les Noces," said Levin."We were astounded."
The folk wedding rituals that inspired Stravinsky will also be staged by the ensemble as part of tonight's program.
Pokrovsky has been at the Moscow end of a Dartmouth-Russia connection that has been nurtured through the music and Russian departments. He first came to Dartmouth in 1992 at Levin's invitation to co-teach a course titled "Music, Traditio and Culture Policy in Russia."
Last Winter, through Pokrovsky's Moscow connections, Music Professor Jon Appleton spent a month at the Moscow Conservatory lecturing on electro-acoustic music. A student from the Conservatory, Sergei Kossenko, is presently studying in the music department's graduate program in electro-acoustic music. Appleton and his students used the resources of the Bregman Electronic Music Studio to help Pokrovsky record the computer pianos on the compact disc.
Student tickets for tonight's performance are $5.50, available at the Hopkins Center box office.
