Debussy: La Mer

After a highly successful debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in December 1927, John Barbirolli became the youngest ever conductor to direct a Royal Philharmonic Society concert – he was 29. He chose Debussy’s La Mer, which had not been played in London for ten years. The orchestra needed more time on the unfamiliar score, so Barbirolli paid for an extra rehearsal out of his own pocket; the cost was almost as much as his fee for the whole concert.

Barbirolli continued to serve French music with care and devotion for the rest of his life. At his last concert with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, in May 1970, he conducted Ravel’s Mother Goose suite. The Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz became a central work in Barbirolli’s repertoire. He conducted it at two important events in the Hallé’s history – the first concert given in the new Free Trade Hall, Manchester in 1951 and then two years later he conducted the work at the Hallé’s first ever Prom concert.

Barbirolli’s classic recording of Symphonie fantastique is now restored to the catalogue along side three pieces from Le Damnation de Faust. A bonus track includes a rehearsal sequence (Menuet des follets) from this recording session.

The long-time dictator of the Boston Symphony appeared at Carnegie hall in early 1942 in a series of historic concerts that breathed new life into the moribund New York Philharmonic. TIME Magazine had nicknamed them “The Dead End Kids”, and Koussevitzky had just two weeks to whip this recalcitrant band of notorious musical delinquents into shape: quite a few of the younger members had been called up for military service and were replaced by new players. This new release documents this difficult period in the New York Phil’s history.

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.

The extraordinarily gifted Guido Cantelli (1920–1956) was born in Novara, Italy.

After studies at the Milan Conservatory, he returned to Novara in 1941 to become conductor and artistic director of the Teatro Coccia which had been founded by Toscanini. After the war, in which he served in the Italian Army, he started to conduct the La Scala Orchestra in Milan and appeared with other European orchestras. In 1948 Toscanini, who held him in the highest regard, invited him to be a guest conductor with the NBC orchestra in New York. From 1949 each year, Cantelli conducted the NBC, the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony orchestras. In 1950, he was at the Edinburgh Festival and in 1951 Lucerne, Salzburg and Venice Festivals. He started recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra for EMI but was tragically killed in an air crash in Paris in 1956. Walter Legge wrote, ‘no other conductor in the history of the art has established, so early in life, so wide a fame’. While studio recordings validate that encomium, none quite captured the incandescence of his live performances.

These important and very rare live recordings featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra derive from the Music Preserved archive and have never been released before. They have been carefully restored by Paul Baily.

The Glasgow Herald stated that Cantelli’s Schumann nearly raised the roof with its excitement but it also noted ‘the plasticity of line and transparent textures’. Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien was a Cantelli speciality and was noted by the Glasgow Herald for ‘its breathtaking moments’ which held the audience in rapt silence. Similarly, Debussy’s La Mer got praise for the conductor’s feeling for orchestral colouring and ‘rhythmic exactitude that mark the conductor at his best … There is no mistaking the greater impetuosity and attack in the Edinburgh account compared to the Kingsway Hall recording made four days later.’ (Mark Kluge)

These performances offer an intimate glimpse of a wonderful partnership between Cantelli and the Philharmonia Orchestra which was so tragically cut short.

Gustavo Dudamel, Gramophone magazine’s "Artist of the Year" 2011 and Grammy award winner 2012, leads the classical summer live and TV event of 2012: The Summer Night Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic.

The concert takes place on June 7th in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Last year’s Summer Night Concert was a huge success.

In 2012 a total of 62 countries on five continents will share in the spectacle, including a BBC4 broadcast in the UK.

This year the main theme is Dances and Waves, a programme showcasing symphonic and operatic highlights.

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’.

Deutsche Grammophon presents internationally acclaimed conductor Myung-Whun Chung and his Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra with a new album. The orchestra is “a world-class ensemble” (Berliner Morgenpost) setting a new standard for orchestral music in Korea and regularly breaking records by playing for largely sold-out audiences.

The album includes Debussy’s La mer followed by two live recordings of Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l'oye and La Valse.