Denmark’s leading instrumentalists Ulla Miilmann (flute) and Tine Rehling (harp) joined forces to record a superb collection of late romantic and impressionistic works by an alley of foremost composers of France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Ulla Miilmann and Tine Rehling began their collaboration as duo in 2007. They have since been dazzling wide range of audiences with their pure and elegant interpretation of repertoire with a significant emphasis on French music.
Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps; Debussy: Jeux / Pierre Boulez
Sony Masterworks
CD
$17.99May 06, 2013
Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works. Le Sacre du Printemps serves as a point of reference to all who seek to establish the birth certificate of what is still called “contemporary” music.
R E V I E W S
There is a controlled intensity about Boulez's 1971 New York performance of Petrushka... In The Rite of Spring...Boulez is less lyrical than the composer but compensates with relentless rhythmic urgency. The massive vividness of sound matches the monolithic quality of the interpretation.
-- Penguin Guide reviewing Le Sacre du Printemps previously reissued on Sony 64109
The pianist Élodie Vignon discovered and explored this perilous repertory of Debussy when she was still very young… She captured its poetic power, and she has never confused it with the vague and the approximate. She understood very early on that, for a pianist, Debussy’s last great cycle presented an inexhaustible reservoir of passion and rigour, of fire and precision, of work and relaxation. Her committed, precise interpretation, that keeps her ever in movement, ever in investigation, shows this, and she does not hide it, declaring that the "Études" never tire her and that, wherever she may be in the world, she feels at home when she plays them. The second part of the album counts twelve poems by the Belgian poet Lucien Noullez written for Élodie Vignon and her vision of the Études. Clara Inglese tell them above the echo of Élodie's music.
Debussy: Orchestral Works Vol 7 / Thibaudet, Meyer, Markl, Lyon NO
Naxos
CD
$19.99Nov 15, 2011
An important marker in Debussy’s compositional development, the Fantaisie reflects something of the influence of César Franck’s Symphonic Variations yet embodies his own new aesthetic. Unpublished in Debussy’s lifetime, it is heard here in its 1968 revision. The delicately evocative Rapsodie for saxophone is an exotic work with an ‘oriental’ atmosphere and Spanish or Moorish associations. Although composed as a Conservatoire test piece, the Première Rapsodie for Clarinet has long since entered the repertoire as an important addition for the instrument. The glittering Danses for harp and strings recall Satie’s Gymnopédies, with the Danse profane in particular calling for a degree of virtuosity. Volume 6 of this much-admired series (Naxos 8.572583) was praised for its ‘subtle and sensitive readings’. (Gramophone)
"We've reached Volume 7 in Naxos's superb Lyonnaise exploration of Debussy's orchestral works with the thrilling Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, superbly played here by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. It's a grand showpiece, reminiscent of César Franck's Symphonic Variations but painted in Debussy's inimitable palette."
(...) But what insights into the chemistry, the constructional and structural wonders of these Préludes do Koroliov's musical-pathological dissections allow? They lead into the inside of this texture, invalidating all that one has experienced for frightful - and then again delightful - moments of thinking and feeling. In a peaceable way, they force one to unbiased expose oneself to a strange experience, yet, in the next moment, a familiar experience once again. (Klassik. Heute. De)
Debussy: Complete Works For Solo Piano Vol 2 / Paul Crossley
Sony Masterworks
CD
$17.99Jan 11, 2008
Crossley's playing of ''Brouillards'' (the first Prelude of Book 2) successfully evokes the disturbing fog of a winter night in which objects appear suddenly and menacingly. I actually think the marking Modere suggests a quicker tempo—Gieseking takes 2'44'' as against Crossley's 3'33'', but there again, the admirably sensitive Gordon Fergus-Thompson takes a minute longer than Crossley!... This Debussy is beautifully textured, with fine control of fingers and pedals; indeed, it is most sympathetically presented and the recording, made at The Maltings, Snape, is satisfyingly atmospheric, with a glowing sound rather than a brilliant one... This applies equally to the Estampes and Children's Corner. In the former work. ''Pagodes'' is a touch deliberate, but has lovely sounds; indeed, Crossley's tonal beauty is consistent...
Debussy: Pelleas et Melisande / Pascal, Malmo Opera [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques
Blu-Ray
$36.99Nov 17, 2017
When Debussy completes the score, based on the eponymous symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck, of Pelleas et Melisande in 1902, the world of opera still abides by Richard Wagner and the upheaval he caused with Tristan und Isolde. But Debussy decides to stand on the exact opposite side, and uses his new opus to preach a new aesthetic creed. In depicting the forbidden love story between the timid Pelleas and the beautiful Melisande, kept apart by an unfortunate marriage, the French composer brings us back to the immortal legend of Tristan and Isolde, but this time showing the world that the future of music could very well lie far away from Wagner’s overwhelming lyricism and outsized rhetoric. This new production, created by one of the rising stars of French stage direction Benjamin Lazar for the Malmö Opera (headed by Ingmar Bergman from 1952 to 1958), encapsulates all the different aspects of this mysterious work, from the oniric poetry invented by Maeterlinck and Debussy to the realism, poignant because openly simple and even mundane, of these profoundly human beings lost in a forest full of sound and symbols that will never let them escape. The young French conductor Maxime Pascal, the Orchestra of the Malmö Opera, and an almost all-French cast (among which the excellent Marc Mauillon and Jenny Daviet), bring forth with intelligence all the refinement and all the vitality this unique and fascinating score has to offer.
Kultur SPIEGEL, January 2005: "There are good pianists, there are grandiose pianists and there is Evgeni Koroliov: In each recording the Russian pianist, who hitherto was mainly to be heard playing Bach, sets new standards. With Debussy he competes with champions such as Gieseking or Michelangelo - and triumphs: this round of portraits of atmosphere, hovering wonderfully between jest and seriousness, has never before sounded so expressive or transparent."
Along with Horowitz's famous interpretation, Van Cliburn's is one that makes every bar of the Barber Sonata really speak. Even in an excessively dry recording he manages to suggest an epic dimension, with song, dance, struggle and celebration held in admirable balance.
And it is not just the Barber which makes this an exceptionally desirable reissue. Cliburn's Mozart is beautifully shaded, scrupulously stylish and sensitive to harmonic pulls towards the dark side; and his Debussy is both supple and suavely textured, with a wonderfully judged rhapsodic abandon in ''La soiree dans Grenade''. I could understand some listeners finding the Mozart a little too well-scrubbed and toy-soldierish in places, and there is a tendency for shapes in the Debussy pieces to be too spasmodic—the Octaves Study is not helped by an exaggerated response to caesuras, and ''Jardins sous la pluie'' is too fast and marred by persistent mis-reading of B sharps as B naturals. But all that detracts very little from a truly distinguished souvenir of Cliburn's artistry.
![Debussy: Pelleas et Melisande / Pascal, Malmo Opera [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3747335.jpg?v=1787259826&width=800)
![Debussy: Pelleas et Melisande / Pascal, Malmo Opera [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3747335.jpg?v=1787259826&width=400)
