debussy orchestral works dutoit ansermet chailly haitink

Debussy Orchestral Works Dutoit Ansermet Chailly Haitink Full And Rich

An interesting comparison would be with the performance under Roth, using French instruments of the time, but I have not been able to hear that.

Everyone who has heard Faurs Pnlope, his second opera, agrees that it is a beautiful work, but stagings are rare though there was one in February this year in Brussels and, so far, there has only been one commercial recording, a fine one under Dutoit.

The Prelude makes a few more appearances, and Ansermet was particularly fond of it.

It is a sombre piece, with some surprisingly Wagnerian sounds in it.

Faur had been a keen Wagnerian, travelling round Europe to hear his works and even going to Bayreuth.

Debussy Orchestral Works Dutoit Ansermet Chailly Haitink Full And Rich

The Prelude sounds even more Wagnerian here, played by a German orchestra with its full and rich woodwind and brass, as opposed to the piquant timbres more characteristic of the French tradition.

The suite to Plleas et Mlisande is one of Faurs best-known works.

He was commissioned to write incidental music for a production of Maeterlincks play and wrote nineteen numbers for it.

As he was short of time he enlisted his pupil Charles Koechlin to orchestrate it for a pit band, though under his supervision.

From this he extracted the suite of four numbers, and himself reviewed the scoring and expanded it for larger forces, including two harps but no trombones or tuba.

It is therefore slightly puzzling that the listing on the sleevenote gives the suite as arr.

What I hear is the normal four movement suite, very charmingly played.

The best known number is the Sicilienne, actually first written for another play, which has one of those tunes which, once you have heard, you feel as if you have known all your life.

A particular attraction of this disc is the first recording of Debussys Ariettes oublies in an orchestration by the Australian composer Brett Dean.

Here I must confess that I rarely listen to songs with piano, but I love orchestral song cycles.

They are settings of the French symbolist poet Verlaine, in his most languorous and decadent mood.

Magdalena Koen with her sultry voice might not be the singer one would expect in this delicate repertoire, but she adopts a confiding and caressing tone, rising where needed to big climaxes.

Deans orchestration is impressive, staying close to Debussys idiom but occasionally going slightly beyond it in a Wagnerian direction.

I was a bit apprehensive that Ticciati would give us a perfectly decent but otherwise unremarkable performance.

The last movement in particular has a really menacing opening and rises to two huge climaxes.

The icing on the cake is that, like most of the conductors I admire in this work, he has restored the brass fanfares in the finale, and they ring out boldly.

As this is the first recording of Deans orchestration of the Ariettes oublies, there are no direct comparisons.

For the Faur works I turned to Michel Plassons two disc set of his orchestral works.

This is a useful piece of work and in the Pellas suite it includes an extra number, the Song of Mlisande, ironically enough orchestrated by Koechlin from his own theatre version after Faurs death.