Debussy: Images for orchestra

This generous disc brings together all of Pierre Monteux’s Debussy recordings for Decca and Philips. Encompassing some of Debussy’s major orchestral works, these performances have a fluidity and atmosphere about them in recordings that have worn their years lightly. Monteux omits ‘Sirènes’ in his recording of the Nocturnes – a practice not atypical of recordings of the work in the 1950s and 1960s.

After discs devoted to Ravel and Poulenc (ZZT060901 & ZZT110403 - critical and popular successes, the latter measured in sales), Jos van Immerseel returns to French music, tackling Debussy and his most famous orchestral works.

This he does brilliantly well, of course, relying on historic instruments with the aim of blending a singular vision of these scores with a highly rigorous approach.

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’.

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.

The music of three nations – Britain, Spain and France – inspired Debussy’s Images for orchestra, which occupied him from 1905 to 1912.

Originally conceived for two pianos (Images I and II for solo piano are on 8.550253), this third set draws on several folk songs in its outer movements, the tripartite middle movement evoking in musical terms Spanish sights, sounds and fragrances.

Vivid orchestrations by both Debussy and Ravel of short piano pieces likewise embrace contrasting moods and national characters.

Volumes 1 (8570759) and 2 (8570993) in this series have been highly praised.

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.