Les Noces received a mixed reception to its early performances. While its premiere in Paris in 1923 was welcomed with enthusiasm, the London performance three years later received such a negative response from critics that, according to Eric Walter White, "The virulence of this attack so exasperated [the novelist]
H. G. Wells that on June 18, 1926, he wrote an open letter." Wells' letter, quoted by White, said: "I do not know of any other ballet so interesting, so amusing, so fresh or nearly so exciting as
Les Noces... That ballet is a rendering in sound and vision of the peasant soul, in its gravity, in its deliberate and simple-minded intricacy, in its subtly varied rhythms and deep undercurrents of excitement, that will astonish and delight every intelligent man or woman who goes to see it." The pious reaction of Soviet critics such as
Tikhon Khrennikov was no surprise: "In
Petrushka and
Les Noces Stravinsky, with Diaghilev's blessing, uses Russian folk customs in order to mock at them in the interests of European audiences, which he does by emphasizing Asiatic primitivism, coarseness, and animal instincts, and deliberately introducing sexual motives. Ancient folk melodies are intentionally distorted as if seen in a crooked mirror." However, in 1929,
Boris Asafyev, a musicologist less inclined to stick to the "
party line" made a shrewd prediction: "The young generation will find in the score of
Noces an inexhaustible fountain of music and of new methods of musical formulation – a veritable primer of technical mastery." The passage of time has indeed shown
Les Noces to be one of Stravinsky's finest and most original achievements. Writing in 1988,
Stephen Walsh said, "Although others among Stravinsky's theatre works have enjoyed greater prestige …
The Wedding is in many respects the most radical, the most original and conceivably the greatest of them all."
Howard Goodall has pointed out the influence of the distinctive sonorities of
Les Noces: "To other composers, though, as they gradually came across
Les Noces, its peculiar faux-primitive, fierce sound proved irresistible... The sound world of
Les Noces is, quite simply, the most imitated of all twentieth-century combinations outside the fields of jazz and popular music." Goodall lists composers that have fallen under its influence such as
Orff,
Bartók,
Messiaen and many others, including film composers. In her memoir of working as Stravinsky's agent during the final decade of his life, Lilian Libman recalls the composer's particular fondness for the work: "Still, did he have a favorite as a father has a favorite son?... I think it was
Les Noces... It drew him, it would seem, as no other work of his had done. During the time I knew him, the mention of
Les Noces never failed to produce the same smile with which he greeted those for whom he felt great affection." ==Notable recordings==