Debussy: Jeux - Poème dansé

This collection brings together all the ballets by the two so-called Impressionistic composers, Ravel and Debussy, in recordings by Bernard Haitink.

Ravel’s masterpiece is the three act ballet Daphnis et Chloé, commissioned by Diaghilev, with Nijinsky dancing the lead role. Also included are La Valse, the orchestral version of Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) and two works inspired by Spain, Alborada del gracioso and Boléro – a work Ravel famously described as a “piece for orchestra without music”.

Debussy is represented by two masterpieces from both ends of his career: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a turning point in the history of music that ushered in the modern harmonies of the 20th century, and converted into a sensational ballet by Nijinsky (L'après-midi d'un faune); Jeux was the composer’s last orchestral work and premiered just two weeks before The Rite of Spring.

Before Sir Simon Rattle took over the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he poured all his resources as the conjurer of Early Modern music into his work with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. One of the best documents of this cooperation is his set of recordings of the Impressionist orchestral scores of Claude Debussy.

Recognised internationally as a conductor of the highest calibre, Stéphane Denève took up the post of Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2005, and has since attracted attention from audiences and critics alike. This May, the conductor bids a fond farewell to Scotland and the RSNO with a series of ‘Au Revoir’ concerts, and of course, this disc of orchestral works by Debussy.

After the impact made by the production of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, the next orchestral work by Debussy was awaited with intense interest. La Mer did not disappoint, and is today widely considered to have been crucial in its influence on twentieth-century music. After completing this work, Debussy spent no fewer than seven years wrestling with what were to become Images for orchestra. Some critics were puzzled by the work and suggested that Debussy’s talent might have dried out. They were promptly put right in an article by Ravel, who accused them of ‘slowly closing their eyelids before the rising sun amid loud protestations that night is falling’.

With a sultry flute solo, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune opened an astonishing new world for western music. Debussy based this composition on a poem by Mallarmé, who wrote to the composer: ‘I have come from the concert, deeply moved: A miracle! that your illustration of L’Après-midi d’un faune should present no dissonance with my text, other than to venture further, truly, into nostalgia and light…’

The three Nocturnes feature some of Debussy’s most imaginative orchestral writing. In the words of the composer, ‘the title Nocturnes is… not meant to designate the usual form of a nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word would suggest’. Debussy provided descriptions of the three movements. ‘Nuages’, for example, depicts ‘the slow, melancholy procession of the clouds, ending in a grey agony tinged with white’, and also the experience of standing ‘on the Pont de Solférino very late at night. Total silence. The Seine without a ripple, like a tarnished mirror’.

DSD recording, live at the Barbican September 2009 (La mer), December 2009 (Jeux), May 2010 (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune).

Valery Gergiev has been performing Debussy’s music regularly with the LSO since he became Principal Conductor of the orchestra in 2007. For his latest LSO Live release he records three of Debussy’s most wellknown works for the first time, including a sensational performance of La mer. One of the 20th century’s most innovative and influential composers, Debussy was a 'musical impressionist', although it was a term he disliked. Despite running to little over ten minutes in duration, the sublime Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is widely regarded as one of the important and revolutionary of musical works. La mer was completed ten years later whilst Debussy was living in Eastbourne in Sussex and is a spectacular orchestral showpiece. Jeux, one of Debussy’s final orchestral works, was written for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

Valery Gergiev’s recent releases have included acclaimed recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No 5 and music by Debussy’s French contemporary Ravel. Gergiev and the LSO perform in London and Paris in March before embarking on a European tour in May, visiting Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

CONCERT REVIEWS:

"virtuoso attention to detail and stylistic élan were on show from the start in a pungent performance of Debussy’s three orchestral sketches, La Mer" The Times

"For his players, this [La Mer] was a virtuoso orchestral showcase of relentless proportions. It seemed to have been meticulously rehearsed, with the instruments precisely blended and mercurially responsive to Gergiev’s tweaks of tempo and mood. This was a characteristic LSO-at-the-Barbican sound: big, bold and glossy in the best sense" The Guardian

"Gergiev and the LSO at their best: a sensual, supremely unhurried reading of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune in which Gareth Davies’s flute shimmered into focus over limpid pools of colour from the harp and strings" The Independent

When Claude Debussy (1862-1918) composed his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in 1894, nothing quite like it had been heard before. At the time it totally revolutionised music and set a new path for music in the century to come.

It was during 1905 that Debussy spent some months residing in Eastbourne in England where he completed one of his greatest works – La Mer (The Sea). He had taken refuge in England with his pregnant mistress, Emma Bardac, to escape the scandal caused by the attempted suicide of his then wife. Shortly after returning to Paris, Bardac gave birth to Debussy's only child, Claude-Emma, to whom he dedicated the piano original of his Children's Corner.

The Ballet score Jeux was Debussy's last orchestral work, being written in 1912 for Diaghilev's Ballet Russes with choreography by Nijinsky. It is a complex piece, made up of many small musical cells and changes of tempo.

This volume of Debussy’s orchestral works under Ernest Ansermet brings together all of the composer’s acknowledged masterpieces together with some of the shorter pieces. The rare 1951 recording of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and the 1949 recording of the Images make their first appearance on CD. Ansermet’s second recording of La Mer – he also recorded the piece for Decca in 1947, 1957 and 1964 – his first of the Nocturnes, and the early stereo version of Jeux are, likewise, all rarities. The anthology is completed with an authentically French-sounding Rapsodie pour clarinette as well as a lush Clair de lune and a delectable Petite suite.

The Ballet Edition is a series of 2 CD sets drawn from the catalogues of EMI Classics, presenting the best-loved and most popular ballets, performed by the world’s leading orchestras and conductors.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet reaches the climax of his multi award-winning complete works for piano, with an album of solo piano transcriptions of three ballets from the same period.

Sir Charles Stanford subjected all music to what he called a ‘piano test’: if it didn’t stand up to being played on the piano, then it wasn’t to be taken seriously. In the case of Debussy, all the French composer’s scores went through a notational stage which, if not specifically designed for piano, could be given a reasonably accurate performance on that instrument. Where ballets were concerned, obviously the choreographer had to rehearse the dancers to the accompaniment of a piano score that conformed to the rhythms and structure of the final orchestral product. The three piano versions recorded here were therefore intimately related to both the compositional and production processes.

Khamma stems from a commission in 1910 for an Egyptian ballet, originally entitled Isis. The project was troubled from the start when Debussy refused to reduce the orchestra from 90 to 40 players. He never heard the work, which was first given its concert performance in 1924. Bavouzet writes, ‘I discovered almost by chance in a Parisian music store, a version for piano of Khamma. This had previously escaped me so what was my surprise when I saw the richness and originality! The virtuosity required is much more subtle than the more obvious. It must give the illusion of more perfect sound levels corresponding to each specific instruments group.’ In the midst of the negotiations over Khamma, Debussy wrote his second ballet, Jeux. Jeux is a highly complex and incomprehensible piece for two hands. Bavouzet notes, ‘In several places what Debussy wrote in the reduction for solo piano is really unplayable. The text is so thin and poor that a small part of the richness of the orchestral version is realised. It was indeed this frustration that prompted me to write some years ago, a version for two pianos today published by Durand. But for this disc I had to make a version for two hands to do justice to the score. I can say that this is probably one of the most difficult works that I have played.’ Two months after the Jeux premiere, Debussy began work on his last ballet, La boîte à joujoux, based on an illustrated children’s story. Debussy embraced the plot, busy ‘extracting secrets from [his daughter] Chouchou’s old dolls and learning to play the side drum’. Within a month the first tableau was done, and he claimed he had ‘tried to be straightforward and even “amusing”, without pretentiousness or pointless acrobatics.’ The following month the piano score was complete.

Jean-Efflam concludes, ‘In my opinion the transcriptions can offer greater clarity and organisation of musical discourse. Young conductors have told me that they understood the score of Jeux better after hearing the version for two pianos… for those who do not know these three ballets in their orchestral version, this disc may give them the curiosity to explore the works further.’