There are times when a disk drops through my letterbox and, after tearing the wrapping off the parcel, I look at the CD and despair, wondering do we really need yet another, in this case, recording of Debussy’s popular orchestral works? Then I play the disk and am pleasantly surprised. So it is with this disk. Märkl’s up against very stiff competition – Ansermet, Barbirolli, Boulez and Martinon to name but a few – but he’s his own man and gives us his own view of the music.

The Prélude is very well done. The solo flute is suitably sensuous, and is ably complemented by the solo oboe. Also, I have never heard the two solo violins, at the end, sound quite as winsome as they do here. The big tune in the middle is allowed to expand as it should and the delicate final pages, with slightly too reticent antique cymbals, is well controlled.

La Mer is almost as fine a performance. Starting very mysteriously, Märkl builds up the tension until the music bursts forth with animation. It’s a fine achievement. However, when the second part of the first movement begins, with cellos in eight parts, it’s too reticent and lacks the momentum required to push the music forwards. When Satie first heard this movement, From Dawn to Midday on the Sea, he quipped that he especially enjoyed the bit at a quarter to eleven. Strange as this may seem I think I know the moment he means – at four bars after rehearsal number 13 there is a static section where cor anglais and two solo cellos play a long breathed theme over sustained chords, it’s a magical moment which prepares us for the build up to the climactic final bars. Märkl makes these few bars quite magical and the calm is quite stunning. The coda is well built but the final three chords – which should beat us about the head with their power – fail to completely satisfy. The scherzo, Play of the Waves, is too heavy handed and the important colouristic glockenspiel part all but inaudible. The tension and suspense of the final movement, Dialogue between the Wind and the Sea, is very well done. The climaxes are well developed and the changes of mood and tempo very well handled. There is one strange moment – at rehearsal number 53 the horns play a triplet, followed, in the next bar, by two minim chords. In this recording we are treated to an extra triplet chord! I’ve played this moment several times, thinking my ears were deceiving me, but no, it’s there, an extra triplet beat. As it’s an exact repeat of what they played six bars earlier I’m mystified by what happens. Why is this extra chord there and what is the purpose? I doubt it’s an editing error so the conductor must have heard it as the horns played the passage. Curiouser and curiouser. Better news is that four bars after rehearsal number 59, under the big chords for winds and strings, Märkl plays the brass fanfares which, more often than not, are ignored by conductors as not being in a real Debussy style. Perhaps they are somewhat unsubtle for Debussy, and for this moment, but without them the music suddenly stops dead, it seems empty, something has to be played there and if these fanfares are all we have then we have to have them. It’s a good performance but it lacks that final insight, that ultimate injection of energy which makes the Hallé/Barbirolli recording so memorable and compelling.

Jeux is one of Debussy’s most elusive scores (it was his last orchestral work). It’s a ballet which concerns a lost tennis ball and a boy and two girls who look for it, as they play hide and seek, try to catch one another, quarrel and sulk without cause. Their games are interrupted when another tennis ball is mischievously thrown in by an unknown hand which surprises and alarms them and they disappear into the nocturnal depths of the garden. The story isn’t important. Debussy’s music is. It receives an excellent performance here – Märkl fully understands what is going on in the music and leads his players through the myriad tempo changes, keeps the ever changing orchestral colouring alive and generally makes clear music which so often sounds confused and muddled. You’d be hard pressed to find a finer performance on disk.

André Caplet was a close friend of Debussy and worked on the orchestration of the latter’s incidental music for Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien and the ballet La Boîte à joujou. He also made two, superb, reductions for two pianos, four hands and six hands, of La Mer, and made orchestral transcriptions of several piano works. Children’s Corner is a delightful six movement suite for solo piano; it’s light hearted, full of fun and several of the movements have become popular independently of the suite – The Little Shepherd and Golliwog’s Cake-walk in particular. Caplet’s orchestration has always struck me as being rather heavy handed – odd for so skilful an orchestrator – but here he has met his match with perfect piano music which does not lend itself to orchestration. Märkl does his best but, ultimately, it’s still too heavy and much of the humour is lost.

Apart from Jeux, which is superb, I would not put these performances of La Mer and the Prélude ahead of other recordings which are currently available - those conductors listed above - but they are very serviceable and if you’re on a tight budget, or just wanting to dip your toes in the Debussian water for the first time, then at the bargain price you’ll get much from these atmospheric readings.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

This release presents the first books of both the Preludes and the Images, works in which Debussy found his mature piano style, full of unheard colors, atmospheres and perfumes, each with a descriptive title, but even without the title pure creations of imagination and craftmanship. Alessandra Ammara is one of the finest Italian pianists of today. Her affinity with the French impressionist music is confirmed by her extraordinary recording of Ravel's piano works.

Harpists Eva Tebbe and Ekaterina Levental remark that Debussy makes the invisible visible and turns the unspeakable into a musical world full of mysticism, layers of ambiguity and evocative meanings. A century after his death, he is being celebrated across the world in 2018, and this album promises to make a special contribution on record with arrangements of works, most of them relatively unfamiliar, which particularly lend themselves to the ethereal and exquisite combination of voice and harps. Much of the music here was written while Debussy was composing his only opera Pelléas et Mélisande, a Symbolist drama based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, who recognized that in many ways Debussy had not only set his play to music but even outstripped and further enriched his original. There is the early and peaceful Ballade from 1890, then the Proses lyriques from 1892-3 and the seductive Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1897), from which this musical partnership takes its name. Bilitis is the fictional poet of Classical antiquity invented by Pierre Louÿs, writing in an erotic, symbolist vein after the fashion of Sappho: and when in 1900 Debussy came to use the texts of Louÿs again for the Musique de Scène pour les chansons de Bilitis, the music accompanied a tableau vivant in pre-Raphaelite style of winsome and scantily clothed young women. The recital is completed by the Danse sacrée et danse profane – originally composed for harp and orchestra in 1904, here with the orchestral parts arranged for a second harp – and the six Epigraphes Antiques from 1914, which return to the musical material of the Bilitis works but in the composer’s more allusive late style which would lead to his final masterpiece written for Serge Diaghilev, Jeux.

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This new Pelléas et Mélisande from the Opernhaus Zürich should be remembered as one of Dmitri Tcherniakov's most innovative production. Forget about the fountains, the caverns, the forest, the castles and the towers : here, the density of Maurice Maeterlinck’s and Claude Debussy’s symbolism becomes the starting point of an analytical journey into the human mind : it is now the psychoanalyst, ‘‘doctor’’ Golaud, who has to uncover the secrets of Melisande, an unfortunate and traumatized creature he brings home, and whose silence and puzzling attitude eventually bring him on the verge of insanity. But this production is also the occasion for a reunion between Dmitri Tcherniakov and French conductor Alain Altinoglu, after the tremendous success of the Tchaikovsky diptych Iolanta / The Nutcracker - arguably one of the most successful titles of the Bel Air Classiques catalogue. Their artistic complicity is intact : the precise, analytical but also nuanced and poetic baton of Altinoglu proves to be the best possible response to Tcherniakov’s subtle exploration of the human psychology. Corinne Winters, as Melisande, Jacques Imbrailo, as Pelléas, and especially Kyle Ketelsen, as Golaud, embody with an incandescent realism these characters plagued by a form of evil and violence that we will never quite understand.

Classical Music

Claude Debussy is considered by today's critics as one of the artists who mark the turning point between two great periods in the history of music: the romantic heritage of the 19th century and the modernity of the 20th. At the beginning of his career Debussy was defined an impressionist, the musical equivalent of impressionism in figurative arts. This label fell upon him quite obviously, but because of his connections with Mallarm� and Maeterlinck it didn't' quite suit him, so much that later on he would rather be defined a symbolist artist. Generally speaking, the symbolist movement is what best describes Debussy's art. But the composer had created his first masterpiece, the cantata La Damoiselle �lue on a text written by Dante Gabriele Rossetti, the most eminent figure of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and his last works had been contemporary, from both the chronological and spiritual point of view, to the beginning of the abstract movement initiated by Mondrian. In Debussy's piano works we can find the signs of his evolution which allow us to understand the several phases of his poetics, not only as an artist but as a music conveyor, carried in parallel with all the artistic fields from the 19th to the 20th century. The extraordinary bravura of pianist Ilia Kim is the strong point of this release which features works that Debussy composed over several periods of his career, thus providing an accurate and complete insight of the composer's evolution.

Two well-known and two less-familiar orchestral works by Debussy • A new recording from the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and Heinz Holliger, following up on their globally acclaimed Koechlin series • A continuation of the orchestra’s exploration of the French orchestral repertoire that began with their CDs of the music of Koechlin • May 21st 2014: Heinz Holliger’s 75th birthday The "Afternoon of a Faun“ together with the orchestral "Images" are among Claude Debussy’s best known and most popular compositions. Both works show different side of the composer: "Afternoon of a Faun" is a textbook example of musical impressionism, while about the "Images", the composer himself said that his goal was to “try to achieve something different – an effect of reality”. The scores contrast well with the two Rhapsodies: the one for clarinet, called the "first" Rhapsody, was sketched out within a few weeks at the end of 1909, while the "second" Rhapsody for saxophone was only completed and orchestrated after the death of its author. The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and conductor Heinz Holliger manage to bring out the evocative, dynamic colors and peculiarities to be found in all of these works with precision.

This recording presents two of Claude Debussy's enduring masterpieces- the Children's Corner suite (1908), and his brilliant- Études (Books 1 & 2) (1915), played by the American pianist, Aleck Karis. Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two albums on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

In 1891 Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé asked Debussy to compose incidental music for a theatrical version of his poem L’Après-midi d’un faune (The afternoon of the faun) and the resulting work, with its innovative melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic writing, is both impassioned and expressive. The four-hand arrangement was made by Ravel in 1910. Subtitled “esquisses symphoniques” – or symphonic sketches – La Mer, inspired by the natural phenomena of water, light and wind, is a masterpiece that doesn’t conform to structural convention. Of the evocatively enchanting Images, he wrote that it marked a departure for him, dealing with “realities” not impressionism.

Debussy completed his two books of Preludes in 1910 and 1913 respectively, and they contain some of his most visionary and poetic writing for piano. There are evocations of calm seascapes, delicate wind tracery, and snow-covered landscapes. Some moments are steeped in antiquity, such as La cathedrale engloutie, others in expressive portraiture, as in La fille aux cheveux de lin. There is even a cake-walk. The Preludes are performed here in the subtle and colouristic orchestrations of muchadmired Slovak-born composer Peter Breiner. Throughout it's history, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra has played an important part in Scotland's musical life, including performing at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament building in 2004. Jun Merkl has appeared as a guest conductor with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, NHK Symphony, Tonhalle Zurich, and the Munich, Oslo and Czech Philharmonics among others, and at the Met, Covent Garden, Vienna State and Dresden Semper Operas.

Works for solo piano and orchestra, including the ever popular pieces La Mer and Three Nocturnes, highlight this budget collection of music by this giant of French impressionism.

François-Xavier Roth, Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, displays his deep affinity with the music of Debussy and Ravel on his latest LSO Live album. A fascination with his Spanish heritage would be a recurring theme in many of Ravel's creations. Mysterious melodies weave delicately throughout his early work Rapsodie espagnole, punctuated by bursts of Spanish-inspired fanfares and Habanera dance rhythms. The voluptuous flute opening of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune immediately conjures a world of luxurious fantasy, weaving through the music's changing scenes with effortless spontaneity. Every instrument adds something unique, and the whole work appears to float free of form and convention. In La mer, Debussy tells the story of the eternal odyssey of the ocean. He sails through storm and calm, wind and rain, in music that rises and falls with the rhythms of the sea. The score is so vivid that you can almost smell sea salt and see the crests of the waves.

"His command is absolute, the mood calmingly resigned... The underlying melancholy (missed here by many) is fully brought out... [others] Weber's concertino, excellently exploits the clarinet's qualities... Baermann's Adagio has a certain melodic grace of an operatic kind ; and Debussy's Rhapsodie (competition work) has a lot of characteristic things, and never suggests that it was a piece he really had to write... Brymer's playing will be familiar from many recordings: He has a smooth technique, a lovely liquid tone - rich and warm in the clarion register, oily and vibrant in the chalumeau... He phrases Kramář with grace in the outer movements and expression in the Adagio; a skillful, thoroughly musical performance". (Gramophone)

Classical Music

The Covid pandemic caused the cancellation of the performances of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra National de Bordeaux, which approached Alpha in order to make an audio recording of this masterpiece. So here is that unexpected but highly anticipated new version, with an exceptional cast and a young conductor, Pierre Dumoussaud, whose calling card it is fast becoming, since he has already conducted it in many houses. ‘His conducting calls for nothing but praise, striking a fine balance between analytical clarity and theatrical life, while at the same time bringing out the extraordinary modernity of this intoxicating music’, wrote Christian Merlin in Le Figaro of one of his staged performances. The ‘disarming sincerity’ of Pelléas (Stanislas de Barbeyrac), the ‘constant emotion’ of Mélisande (Chiara Skerath), the ‘bitingly intense singing’ of Golaud (Alexandre Duhamel) – these are some of the comments elicited by the 2018 performances in the staging of Philippe Béziat and Florent Siaud, the intended revival of which this year was prevented by the health emergency. The album cover features a photo from that memorable production.

Philip Chiu - "Voyages" / Pianist Philip Chiu presents Voyages, "a deeply personal album that represents a humble attempt to capture something elusive to me: a sense of belonging. Where do we belong? To whom do we belong? What belongs to us, what is ours simply because it was handed to us, and what is ours because we chose it?

Around Gershwin is star accordionist Richard Galliano's tribute to George Gershwin, in-terweaving his music with works by early twentieth-century composers such as Debus-sy, Rachmaninoff, Satie, Ravel and Faure, as well as new compositions of his own. Seen through the lense of Galliano's masterful musicianship, these pieces create the sensa-tion of a sonic odyssey.

This is the new recording we have been waiting for. Three years after Brahms (ALPHA792), the Belcea Quartet returns in a new formation: Suyeon Kang, their new second violin, joined the quartet in 2023. Today the Belcea Quartet presents a new recording of the Debussy Quartet - which they had previously recorded on their very first album 25 years ago - and two quartets by Karol Szymanowski, a composer they are particularly fond of and who possesses a unique and immediately identifiable musical language. The first quartet was composed in 1917 but the Russian Revolution intervened; it's premiere finally took place in 1924. Szymanowski - then a world-renowned composer and a leading figure in the reconstruction of musical life in the young Polish Republic - wrote his second quartet ten years after the first in 1927; it was premiered in Warsaw two years later.

Saskia Giorgini presents Images, containing some of Claude Debussy's most colourful piano works. Starting with tuneful early works such as the Danse (Tarantelle styrienne) and Deux arabesques, Giorgini gradually works towards later, more ambitious pieces such as the Estampes and the two sets of Images, from which the album derives it's name. Debussy's music has always held an enormous attraction to Giorgini, and this album is the result of a years-long search to bring these mesmerising musical pictures to life. With her solo Liszt recordings, Giorgini has demonstrated a masterful touche and unique sense of colour, which makes Debussy's music an obvious next step.

Having recorded the 'great' French quartets of Debussy and Ravel (ALPHA295), the Van Kuijk Quartet now takes another path and explores treasures by Faure, Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Poulenc that were originally composed for piano or voice. The mark of the string quartet is secretly apparent in this programme, which includes Debussy's Petite Suite pour piano � quatre mains, Ravel's famous Pavane pour une infante defunte and well-known songs by Poulenc, Faure and Satie in transcriptions made especially for this recording by Emmanuel Francois, the Quartet's violist, and by Jean-Christophe Masson and Gildas Guillon. The Quartet also asked the jazz pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon to create a work that would freely resonate alongside the styles of the composers whose works had been transcribed. An entire universe has now been re-created without any nostalgia or pastiche behind the first names of these composers, Ces Messieurs. The Van Kuijks have woven their instruments in and around these miniatures and here unfold a programme that is all lightness and delight.

Guitarist from Rome, Marina Tomei is among all the most active young Italian guitarists in the world music scene. She began to study guitar with Bruno Battisti D'Amario, the historical guitarist of Ennio Morricone. She continued her academic studies in Florence, as a fellow at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, where she studied with Maestro Francesco Cuoghi. She received her degree in guitar under the guidance of Maestro Arturo Tallini at the Conservatory of Music Santa Cecilia in Rome. She worked in Masterclass with Dusan Bogdanovich, Magnus Andersson and Ricardo Gallen among others. She was selected to attend the Aspen Music Festival and School, under the instrumental direction of Sharon Isbin, and the famous Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Oscar Ghiglia. The CD offers, with personal lyrical strength and colorful language, a fascinating musical journey into the compositions of twentieth-century authors.

With mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena and pianist Mitsuko Uchida, two world stars join hands on L'extase, a collection of songs by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. Debussy was Messiaen's life-long idol, and their songs are equally colourful, sumptuous, sensual, and occasionally exotic. The album derives it's name from the sultry song 'C'est l'extase langoureuse' from Debussy's Ariettes oubliees, and this song cycle is combined with his Chansons de Bilitis and Cinq poemes des Baudelaires, while Messiaen is represented by the second book of his Poemes pour Mi, a declaration of love for his first wife Claire Delbos. This recording demonstrates the profound affinity of both performers with French music, as well as their congeniality as musical partners. With L'extase, star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena presents the seventh album of her exclusive collaboration with Pentatone, after having presented Il giardino dei sospiri, Soiree (both 2019), Nostalgia (2021), Folk Songs (2023), the title role in Handel's Alcina and Czech Songs (both 2024). One of the most revered artists of our time, Mitsuko Uchida is known as a peerless interpreter of the works of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Beethoven, as well for being a devotee of the piano music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Gyorgy Kurtag. She makes her PENTATONE debut.

The original semantic value of re-ligio, therefore considered as a restoration of contacts, as a meeting point of distant but related cultures. Referring to the genesis of the work, the composer herself states: Reading these works has significant inner similarities: contemplation and sophistication. The lines from the work of IV Oganov - "the pain of a flower's test", "... The roar of the singing garden grew", "... The revelation of the rose... ", "... The lotus was set on fire by the music", "... The white garden began to resound again with diamond borders... " - encouraged me to a concrete sound perception of this garden. On the other hand, however, all this ecstatic flowering was expressed naturally in Tanzer's reflections on the world in it's entirety. At the basis of the musical rendering of this piece there is in fact the opposition of the bright and diaphanous timbre of the natural harmonics with the sad coloratura of the intervals of minor second and minor third.

With Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Monologues, the piano duo Vincent and Sophie Neeb place a rarely performed masterpiece at the centre of their debut recording. The composer describes his work, first performed in 1965, as "dialogues across the ages of dreamers, lovers, sufferers and praying people", which offers a journey through music history with sophisticated collages.
Following this inspiration, the programme is completed with a contrasting selection of compositions quoted there: Works by Bach and Debussy, creatively arranged for two pianos and percussion by Johannes Xaver Schachtner, and a Mozart arrangement by the piano duo Neeb enter into a unique dialogue via this inner context?

Together with percussionists Christian Benning and Patrick Stapleton, the piano duo Neeb explores surreal dream worlds - playfully light and enigmatically profound at the same time.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous Trois Nocturnes. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.