Collectif9, well-known for its innovative programming and its unique arrangements of the classical repertory, here tackles the music of Debussy, following a first recording devoted to Mahler (ALPHA770). With Clair de lune, La Mer and Des pas sur la neige, the Montreal collective invites us into a sumptuous theatre of shadows and waves: ‘Could we, as nine string players, perform Claude Debussy’s La Mer and do it justice? In a musical style where timbre and color are paramount, attempting to interpret this emblematic work seemed outrageous; but come to think of it, we like a challenge. This is certainly a reinterpretation. Being fewer in number allows us to otherwise reveal a rich rhythmic interplay already present in the work while shedding new light on the balance of voices and harmonies.’ A work by composer Luna Pearl Woolf completes the program: Contact, ‘a sonic view into the underwater world of beluga whales in the St Lawrence Estuary’.

The woodwind quintet Reeds in Motion is a special ensemble in many aspects. The exclusive instrumentation alone - oboe, saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and bassoon - is not commonplace. They are all instruments that are made to sound with a single or double reed and thus form an extremely homogeneous and changeable body of sound. For their debut album on Prospero Classical, the five young musicians have chosen original arrangements of Francophone composers: Works by Debussy, Fauré, Hahn, Poulenc, Ravel and Satie. The five musicians, who met during their studies at the Basel Music Academy and came together in 2017 with Reeds in Motion, are all sought-after soloists, chamber and orchestral musicians, thus enriching the ensemble each in its uniqueness. Reeds in Motion has performed at festivals such as Lauvaux Classique and Klangbasel festivals, as well as in Paris for a live broadcast on France Musique and in Armenia at the International Wind Festival 2019 in Yerevan.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck continue their collaboration with Alpha Classics and here invite the Maîtrise and Chœur de Radio France to join them in a Debussy program. This recording couples La Damoiselle élue, a work described by the composer as a ‘little oratorio in a mystical and somewhat pagan vein’, the Nocturnes for orchestra, composed between 1897 and 1899, and the ’symphonic fragments’ from Le Martyre de saint Sébastien fashioned by André Caplet less than a year after the work’s first performance, and which ensured it would not be forgotten by posterity.

KAZUHITO & NAOKO YAMASHITA- GU

Guarneri Quartet. RCA Silver Seal 60909-2 [with Ravel: Quartet in F; Debussy: Suite bergamasque (Alexis Weissenberg, piano)].

The Guarneri Quartet’s 1973 recording, sounding a little wooly but nonetheless quite lovely on CD, conveys the music with endearing sweetness and warmth. No group has ever gotten closer to the spirit of Debussy’s slow movement, or more beautifully captured its fragrant atmosphere and attenuated, almost heartbreaking sentiment. First violinist Arnold Steinhardt is exquisite here, and the group’s playing overall is remarkably polished. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

In 2016 Alessandra Ammara won high praise for an album of Mendelssohn duets with her husband Roberto Prosseda. The following year her Piano Classics debut of Debussy inspired no less glowing reviews. The sequel elegantly completes her recordings of the Préludes and Images with their second volumes, coupled with the more innocent pleasures of the Suite Bergamasque. Thus the album spans Debussy’s first and penultimate published piano cycles, for while the Suite appeared in print only in 1905, it was composed back in 1890. In their titles, three of the four movements – a Prelude, Minuet and Passepied – invoke the formal elegance of a Baroque dance suite, but the elusive character and freedom of the music owes more to the poetry of Verlaine, who used the archaic ‘bergamasque’ term in his poem Clair de lune, which as the suite’s third movement became Debussy’s single greatest hit. In both the Images and Préludes, Debussy invested their second volumes with darker, gloomier tone-colors and higher contrasts with wild outbursts and even manic humor. The portraits of individual characters and landscapes are more sharply drawn, more charged with private intensity. They make accordingly greater demands upon the interpreter, nowhere more so than in the dark, wild magic of the ‘Feux d’artifice’ – Fireworks – which close out the Préludes. The three Images in Book 2 are linked by their association with the Debussy’s friend Louis Laloy, and by extension with their mutual fascination with China and the alien world of East-Asian culture. The bells in ‘Cloches à travers les feuilles’ ring from the church in Laloy’s home-town; the title of ‘Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut’ was proposed by Laloy himself, and the goldfish – ‘Poissons d’or’ of the triptych’s final panel – swim and shimmer through much Chinese lacquer artwork.

Robert Orledge’s research into Debussy’s sketches and incomplete drafts has resulted in the unearthing and reconstruction of numerous lost masterpieces, the piano versions of which are given their première recordings here. Unknown versions of famous pieces such as La Fille aux cheveux de lin and an unused movement from Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien appear alongside the ecstatic Prélude de l’Histoire de Tristan. This uniquely valuable programme also includes the life-affirming suite for No-ja-li (Le Palais du Silence) with narration. NICOLAS HORVATH began his music studies at Monaco’s Académie de Musique et de Théâtre Prince Rainier III and soon began to make an impression on a number of artists who would become his mentors. Aged 16 he caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster before coming to the notice of several distinguished international pianists, including Liszt specialist Leslie Howard. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including First Prize at both the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions. He has become noted for hosting concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the overnight performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie before a cumulative audience of 14,000 people. In 2019 he performed alongside Philip Glass at the same venue in a programme devoted to the American composer’s piano music. Nicolas is a Steinway Artist.

Classical Music

The first major commercial recording by Pierre Boulez, made in 1966 with London’s New Philharmonia Orchestra, was of music by a composer he particularly revered, Claude Debussy. Praised for its “clarity and cool” (New York Times), Boulez’s radical approach to Debussy won him a Grammy. Records & Recording called the CBS album, comprising the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, La Mer, and Jeux, “a record that needed to be made”.

The following year, in which he was appointed principal guest conductor and musical advisor in Cleveland, Boulez made a second Debussy album with that elite ensemble comprising the Images and Danses. Gramophone greeted its release with almost unbounded enthusiasm: “[The Images] are marvelously played by the Cleveland Orchestra, now the finest orchestral instrument in the United States … The Danses for harp and strings, beautifully played … make a very desirable fill-up.” High Fidelity wrote: “This is the most lucid and illuminating performance of the Images that I know, and the Danses are equally accomplished.”

A year later, Boulez returned to the New Philharmonia in London for a third Debussy programme: the three Nocturnes, Printemps and the Clarinet Rhapsody. High Fidelity’s reviewer wrote: “Throughout, a fantastic clarity is brought to Debussy’s textures; entire sections of the orchestra play as one single instrument … so that the over-all rhythmic verve … is beautifully sustained, the harmonic subtleties etched with unimpeachable clarity. The same qualities are found in the other works.”

Then in 1970 Boulez capped his CBS Debussy series, reissued here on 5 albums, with a revolutionary interpretation of the composer’s operatic masterwork Pelléas et Mélisande. It was recorded in conjunction with a rapturously acclaimed new production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with a superb cast including Elisabeth Söderström as Mélisande, George Shirley as Pelléas and Donald McIntyre as Golaud.

Québec-born Marianne Fiset has recently won several prizes – the First Grand Prize of the Montreal International Musical Competition, the Jean A Charles Prize for the best Canadian artist, the Joseph Rouleau Prize for best artist from Québec, the Poulenc French Song Award and the People’s Choice Award in May 2007 . More recently she was named Young Soloist 2008 by the Public Francophonie Radios (Radio France, Radio Suisse–Romande, RTBF Belgium and Radio–Canada). The best news of all is that she thoroughly deserves everything she has received for she has a voice of power and purity, strength but gentleness, and this recital is a real winner.  


Hearing Ravel’s orchestral song–cycle Sh é h é razade with piano accompaniment is an ear–opener for we can concentrate, entirely, on the voice without being distracted by Ravel’s rich orchestration. This is very helpful when hearing a new voice for the first time. The long first song, Asie is built gradually, the descriptions of Asia slowly coming into focus until the big climax, at the words “Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine” (I would like to see death caused by love or even by hate), she lets loose a superbly sustained top register, full of emotion and wonder. The climax, which is fully scored in the orchestral version fares well in this performance, it’s obviously not piano music but it worksl. The coda, full of the thoughts of story telling is well controlled and is tinged with fatigue. Fabulous singing! It’s hard to believe that a song called The Enchanted Flute could work without a solo flute but so sensitive is Marie–È ve Scarfone’s playing that I was never conscious of something missing in this performance.  

“I waken…
And hear outside
The song of a flute pour forth
By turns sadness and joy.”  

Fiset sings, imagining her lover playing the instrument and the notes being kisses landing on her cheek. L’indiff érent (The Indifferent One) is all restraint, but not despair at parting.  

“…remain
On my doorstep and I will watch you depart,
Making a last graceful gesture to me…”  

Here Fiset hits the right tone of I couldn’t care less/I want you but can’t tell you and the short instrumental epilogue sounds as if the loved one were walking into the distance.  

Debussy’s Proses lyriques is an early set of four songs to texts by the composer himself. He was well acquainted with impressionist painters and Symbolist poets so it is, perhaps, no surprise that Debussy would, at some point, create some words of his own to set to music. Certainly these words are highly perfumed, but the music isn’t, and in the long run it might be best to ignore the words and simply enjoy the wonderful songs as pure music. After all, Debussy wrote, “…Good heavens, music is the dream from which the veil is lifted! It is not even the expression of feeling, it is feeling itself.” So as Debussy writes,  

“Dusk falls like tattered
White silk on the sea
The waves chatter like silly
Little girls let out of school
In their lustrous frilly
Green silk dresses.”  

he sets the words to music of such insouciance that we are not concerned with the meaning of the words, rather the sound they make when wedded to the music. This is a fine performance.


For some strange reason the disk ends with Song to the Moon from Rusalka. It sits uncomfortably beside two such strong works of French impressionism, and it seems very old hat indeed! It’s very lovely but this isn’t the place for it. The Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, under its director Jean–Philippe Tremblay accompany well, and I’d love to hear it in some symphonic repertoire for their playing is very first–rate and well worth hearing.

 

This is every inch Fiset’s disk and it’s a good debut. This is a voice which will go far and I do hope that she will not give all her time to the opera for there are some of us who treasure song and there simply aren’t enough singers today giving us good song recitals.

 

The sound is very good, the balance between voice and piano, and orchestra, is excellent. The notes are good too. Indeed, everything about this disk makes it well worth having.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

The works on this disc were arranged by Hiro Fujikake.

The Japanese label Ypsilon International presents its second recording with the pianist Takahiro Yoshikawa totally devoted to Debussy. Yoshikawa plays Debussy paying close attention to every single detail through an in depth reading of the scores. Due to his extremely sensitive touch and accurate use of the pedals we can perceive a new way of interpreting the works of one of the most important composers in the history of music, even in famous pages such as: Clair de lune di Suite bergamasque or Reflets dans l'eau di Image. The recording, which has already been released in Japan, has received excellent critical and audience reviews.

The orchestrations are colorful, subtle and brilliant. A joy to hear. Equally delightful is the playing. The Lyon National Orchestra under Jun Märkl captures the subtlety and beauty of tone throughout every piece and the recorded sound is really first rate.

The Debussy Orchestral Works, Vol. 6 from Naxos offers a nice mix of familiar and rare works, all in exquisite orchestrations by musicians who either knew Debussy or admire his works. Debussy himself wrote all of this music for the piano 4 hands. The orchestrations are colorful, subtle and brilliant. A joy to hear. Equally delightful is the playing. The Lyon National Orchestra under Jun Märkl captures the subtlety and beauty of tone throughout every piece and the recorded sound is really first rate. Orchestrating piano music requires an understanding of both keyboard and orchestral techniques in order to rethink the piano music for an ensemble. It requires interpolations that are natural to the spirit of the music without imparting on the orchestra a pianistic left and right hand. These arrangements make the music sound as if it has always been for orchestra.

The selections range from pops concert favorite, Clair de lune, in a luminous classic arrangement by Andre Caplet to Debussy's early Symphony, of which he completed only the first movement, orchestrated by Tony Finno. With Clair de lune we also get the entire Suite bergamasque from which it comes, the other movements colorfully arranged by Gustave Cloez. The total effect of the suite in this orchestral form is much like a ballet score, performed with lyric grace by Lyon musicians. This is a particularly fine and sensitive performance of Clair de lune. This heartstrings pulling performance of moves at a slightly faster pace than some of the others but remains quite lovely within its own world in the suite.

The Symphony is actually rather good. Its swaggering main theme is a bit repetitious but the overall style is much more romantic than impressionist and reminiscent of perhaps d'Indy, Faure or the rarely heard symphony by Dukas. I've heard one other chamber ensemble arrangement of Debussy's sketches and this version for full orchestra by Tony Finno is far and away the best.

Henri Busser's arrangement of the Petite suite, which certainly has much orchestral competition with performances recorded by Martinon, Tortelier, Ansermet, Dutoit and many more is aided here by superb sound quality and excellent, sensitive artistry. Busser's other orchestration is Printemps, a two movement piece with one foot in the late-romantic era and the other feeling around in the new musical impressionism. The music is played with shimmering beauty. Probably the clearest and most sparkling recorded performance of Printemps I've heard.

En blanc et noir, orchestrated by Robin Holloway is not just black and white as the piano key title implies, but quite colorful. The arrangement was commissioned in 2002 by the San Francisco Symphony. The music is more boisterous and exuberant,sounding at times as if it is about to turn toward Debussy's Iberia but with the Spanish atmosphere replaced instead by a somewhat mischievous quality which grows on you with repeated hearings. The last movement Debussy dedicated to "mon ami Strawinsky"‘. With performances that treat the older works as if they were newly discovered and the unknown works with a sense of magic and wonder, this album is definitely a winner.

- Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic.com

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The most compelling item in this collection is En blanc et noir, not only one of Debussy's most advanced instrumental works (composed for two pianos), but the orchestral arrangement sounds closest to the composer himself. Robin Holloway drew upon Debussy's contemporaneous Jeux as a model, with numerous passages in the first and third movements replicating that work's uniquely colorful sound world. In the reflective middle movement Holloway's orchestral dress evokes the dreamy atmosphere of Les parfums de la nuit from Iberia. Jun Märkl and the Orchestre National de Lyon offer a sparking performance, playing the music with real verve, as if they had discovered a heretofore unknown Debussy masterpiece.

Debussy only completed one movement of his proposed Symphony in B minor (1880), and then only as a piano duet. Tony Finno's orchestral arrangement emphasizes the music's Russian influences (it was composed around the time he was employed by Tchaikovsky's patron Nadezhda von Meck), though there are occasional pre-echoes of the mature Debussy. Märkl and his band perform this and the remainder of the program (the familiar Suite bergamasque, Petite Suite, and Printemps arrangements) with the same vitality and commitment afforded En blanc et noir. The spacious recording is a bit over-reverberant, but nevertheless provides solid presence and impact. Debussy fans will find this release a real delight.

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

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Other review quotes:

"Subtle and sensitive readings" - Gramophone.

"This is bewitching music-making that should on no account be missed. One of the finest discs Naxos has ever released." - Classic FM (about Volume 1 (8.570759).

"Volume 6 in Naxos’s popular series presents five highly diverse works in gorgeous orchestrations by Debussy’s colleagues or later admirers. Indeed, pieces such as Clair de lune and Printemps may even be better known in these seductive guises than in their original forms. Of particular interest is Debussy’s sole attempt at composing a symphony, a youthful work imbued with the spirit of French Romanticism, only the first movement of which he completed." - Naxos

Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen comprises four experienced chamber, solo and orchestral musicians: violinist Malin William-Olsson, cellist Carl-Oscar Østerlind, pianist Kristoffer Hyldigand clarinetist Viktor Wennesz. Formed in January 2018, the quartet has already become established as a vibrant and versatile group, regularly broadcasting on Danish Radio P2 and collaborating with internationally recognized musicians such as violinists Ray Chen and Carolin Widmann. Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen has performed at many festivals throughout Denmark and Sweden and completed a critically-acclaimed tour of Sweden organized by “Musik i Syd” in January 2020.The ensemble has taken its name from the composer Olivier Messiaen, who wrote the “Quartet for the End of Time”. Other compositions for this unusual combination of instruments include master pieces by Paul Hindemith and Walter Rabl. In addition to detailed performances of these existing works, Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen has commissioned several pieces by Danish composers.

It may seem odd to some to find a release of Debussy’s music on Mode Records. But actually not, for Debussy is one of the forefathers of the developments of the second part of the 20th century. This recording of the complete Preludes by Haydée Schvartz had its genesis during her studies with pianist and new music specialist Yvar Mikhashoff. Mikhashoff intrigued Schvartz with the titles of the Preludes, which Debussy curiously placed at the end of each. The lavishly illustrated booklet’s texts are written by Debussy scholar Denis Herlin. He delves into Debussy’s life, the Preludes, and their titles, while the booklet contains images referencing these titles. Bonus tracks include the song “Ain’t it funny what a difference a few hours make” from the musical “The Yankee Consul” which Debussy quotes in “Minstrels.” And an alternate take of "Des pas sur la neige," showing two very different interpretations of that Prelude.

Argentine pianist Haydée Schvartz is already known on Mode Records, having released two previous albums with the label. She is active in new music as well as classical solo and chamber music repertoire and as a soloist with orchestras. Schvartz participated in the Argentinian premiere of John Cage’s "Europera 5" and played the role of Clara Schumann in Gerardo Gandini’s opera "Liederkreis" at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She presented the complete piano works of Luciano Berio for the first time in Argentina and Mexico.

REVIEW:

This most welcome collection of the complete Debussy Préludes, performed by Argentine pianist Haydée Schvartz, and issued by the Mode label, was recorded at the New England Conservatory of Music’s Jordan Hall in the summer of 2003. From a purely sonic perspective, it is a glorious achievement, with the piano reproduced in sound both natural and arresting in its impact. The tone is full, rich, beautiful, and encompassing a grand dynamic range. There is also ample detail, but without any sense of artificial spotlighting. And we are fortunate that the recording/production team achieved such superlative results, because Haydée Schvartz’s renditions of the Debussy Préludes deserve them to the fullest.

-- Fanfare