Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.)
Debussy was one of the most important and influential composers of the early twentieth century. This recording features two of Debussy’s most harmonically innovative and imaginatively orchestrated works. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) evokes a pagan world, as the faun of the title takes his ease in the afternoon shade on a summer day. The three symphonic sketches that constitute La mer (The Sea), inspired partly by Katsushika Hokusai’s famous colour woodcut The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, offer subtly nuanced evocations of the sea from dawn to midday, of the waves and of the dialogue of wind and sea.
Claude Debussy: Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune
Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune
Claude Debussy: La mer
No. 1. De l'aube a midi sur la mer
No. 2. Jeux de vagues
No. 3. Dialogue du vent et de la mer
Claude Debussy: Jeux
Jeux
Claude Debussy: Children's Corner (arr. for Orchestra)
I. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum
II. Jimbo's Lullaby
III. Serenade for the Doll
IV. The Snow is Dancing
V. The Little Shepherd
VI. Golliwogg's Cake-Walk
“Markl and his players acquit themselves admirably, and as one-stop shopping for some of Debussy's most engaging orchestral works it's hard to beat.”
Orchestral Disc of the Month
“…this is bewitching music-making that should on no account be missed… One of the finest discs Naxos has ever released.”
30th May 2008
**
“The Prélude à l'Après-Midi opens with a beautifully shaped flute solo, but then becomes too generalised, without enough stabs of drama to lift its general mood of indolence, while La Mer motors along rather complacently and Jeux totally lacks the quicksilver wit and colouristic imagination that makes it one of the most elusive and potent of Debussy's late works. Whether it's more obvious delight in the luxuriance of the textures, or a sharper analytical insight into the way in which the pieces are constructed, it needs more character; what we get instead is elegant, undemanding background music.”
24th May 2008
***
“Debussy ushered in the modern age with breezy whole-tone scales and mere impressions of keys, which the musicians under Märkl paint with delicious colour. Märkl moves the phrases of La Mer like plump, urgent waves, or smoothes them like the deceptive calm ready to surge at any moment. A sense of lurking danger might have been more apparent, however. The Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune paints beautifully the dancing sunlight but lacks that haunting hollowness in the flute that evokes the pagan past. Jeux is both playful and as tense as a tennis racket. But Children's Corner is a little overpowering for the nursery, the jauntiness now rather grotesque in expanded form.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune
