Coupled With Stravinsky’s 1966 RecordingOf Symphonies of Wind InstrumentsConducted by Robert CraftWith the recent discovery in the Sony BMG Masterworks archives of immaculate, never-before-released stereo masters, composer Igor Stravinsky’s only stereo recording of his haunting musical fable The Soldier’s Tale is at last complete. This Sony Classical CD features newly recorded narration by Academy Award®-winning actor Jeremy Irons of a new English adaptation by writer Jeremy Sams of the original French text. The Soldier’s Tale will be released May 29, 2007 in time for the 125th anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth on June 17.The basis for the new version of The Soldier’s Tale is Stravinsky’s 1961 studio recording, with the Columbia Chamber Ensemble, of the instrumental suite from the complete score. A theater piece for small instrumental ensemble, three actors (in speaking roles) and a dancer, premiered in France in 1918, the score is best known through Stravinsky’s streamlined instrumental suite. The disc also includes a bonus track of the 1966 recording of Stavinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, conducted by Robert Craft under the composer’s supervision. Late in 2005 Sony Classical unearthed documentation relating to a long-forgotten recording session of the remainder of the complete score (including all the interludes and underscoring), which Stravinsky completed in 1967, though it was never released in any format. Both recordings, produced by John McClure, were products of a long and distinguished partnership between Columbia Masterworks (the forerunner of Sony Classical) and Stravinsky (1882-1971), in which the composer conducted or oversaw new stereo recordings of his entire musical catalogue.Actor Jeremy Irons – who, it turned out, had actually performed the complete work live onstage in London in 2004 – agreed to record all of the spoken material, using Sams’ new adaptation of the original French text by C.F. Ramuz. A team of experts in both the US and UK, including the Grammy®-winning producers Steven Epstein and Simon Rhodes and Grammy®-winning engineer Richard King, were able to take the diverse musical elements of Stravinsky’s recording of The Soldier’s Tale and seamlessly edit them together in a complete version, concluding a musical journey that began some 46 years earlier. The CD was remastered using Sony’s DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technology. The package for Sony Classical’s newly realized The Soldier’s Tale includes a reproduction of the original cover art for the LP version of the recording of the suite. Extensive liner notes include an original critical essay by the musicologist Richard Taruskin, author of Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, as well as new interviews with the musicians who played in the original Los Angeles studio sessions under Stravinsky, and an account of how the final “new” recording was realized.]]>