Debussy: La Mer

The Barbirolli Society's new 2-CD release brings together ‘live’ recordings, from the late 1950s, of Sir John conducting the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and the RAI Symphony Orchestra, Turin. The complete concert from the Romanian Atheneum, Bucharest in September 1958 consisted of Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Vaughan Williams’s Fanstasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Debussy’s La Mer and Beethoven’s Symphony No.7.

The George Enescu Philharmonic was founded in 1868, the Romanian Philharmonic Society, conducted by Eduard Wachman, aimed at creating a permanent symphonic orchestra in order to promote musical culture and popularise classical music. When the palace of the Romanian Athenaeum was inaugurated, on 15 March 1889, concerts began to be held there, asnow, and is the headquarters of the Philharmonic. Eduard Wachman, conducted until 1907, and was succeeded by Dimitrie Dinicu, then in 1920, by George Georgescu, a remarkable conductor, student of Arthur Nikisch and Richard Strauss. After George Enescu died, in 1955, the Philharmonic took his name.

The five movements from Holst’s The Planets (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Uranus and Jupiter) comes from a concert in Turin on15 November 1957.

On 8, 9 and 10 January 1978 Giulini conducted three memorable concerts devoted entirely to French music: Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose Suite) and the Concerto for the left hand by Ravel, and after the interval La Mer – a clever choice of programme. “Apparently Giulini's approach to any work that he conducts is somewhat reticent – full of profound awe and humble devotion. He makes no fuss whatever. As soon as this tall, slim, aristocratic man hesitantly enters the stage, his baton pointing down like a Geiger counter, one suspects that the coming performance has not only been preceded by many hours of rehearsal, but also by just as much time spent in contemplation.” Klaus Geitel wrote in Die Welt, 10 January 1978: “The care with which Ravel composed Ma mère l'oye was highlighted by Giulini's careful interpretation. He feels his way thoughtfully through the sections, the music arrives as though on tiptoe, lest the Sleeping Beauty be awakened… Musical miniatures, full of delicate cross references, solemn sophistication, weightless yet significant. Giulini displayed it as though under a magnifying glass: a close-up of small things, every detail clearly brought out.” Wolfgang Burde, the critic of the Tagesspiegel, praised many facets of the concert. Michel Block coped brilliantly with all the technical and interpretative problems of Ravel's Piano Concerto for the left hand, missing none of the punchlines while preserving the transparent delicacy of Ravel's texture. Regarding Ma mère l'oye he stated: “It is quite remarkable how Giulini, who tends to emphasis and the grand gesture of renunciation, also integrates those aspects of refinement, indeed of the fragility of almost foundering speech. What basically concerns him is the mysterious texture of Impressionism, of iridescent beauty, of remoteness and delicacy. Even in La Mer, that grandiloquent showpiece of Impressionism, Giulini attempted to bring more intimate sounds to the fore.” From the booklet note by Helge Grünewald

In February 1969 Giulini presented a programme with a particularly intelligent compilation. Rossini's overture to Semiramide, Symphony No.4 by Schubert, Psyché et Éros by César Franck and La Mer (Debussy) outlined the development from classical music to Impressionism, with each composition already relating to the next one. On 15 February 1969 Joachim Matzner's critique in Die Welt was entitled "Drama and utmost sensitivity". He went on to say that there was hardly another conductor who could combine a melody so sensitively with dramatic tension. "All the melodic phrases, no matter how aristocratic and subtle his conducting, were threedimensional, the counterpoints, rather than being just an additional part were true to their name, defining accents were deployed. And yet, even when the music was intensified almost to the limit, in Giulini's hands it sounded fundamentally unostentatious – neither blurred nor conspicuous. His rendering of Debussy's La Mer in all its marvellous flexibility, its transparency, its colours that never took on a life of their own, made it one of the grandest events to have been put on in Berlin's concert halls for many a year." On 21 February 1969 Rudolph Ganz, writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau, started by praising the intelligent compilation of the programme. Of the overture to Semiramide he wrote that it was no jolly piece of noise but a paragon of precision; Schubert's Symphony No.4, dubbed by the composer the 'Tragic', was just that – neither pompous nor bathetic, but nervous and tense. The romantic climax was Franck's brief fragment Psyché et Éros and Eros and the thrilling finale was La Mer, which was "... extraordinarily animated and vivid. Here again Giulini's tense precision that missed not a single detail of the score was paramount, yet he coaxed a supreme performance from the musicians of the Philharmonic Orchestra." From the booklet note by Helge Grünewald

Debussy, La Mer, Images… this is hardly the first time that a disc has been devoted to them! But when one of the most highly-ranked conductors in France is at the head of the ‘Frenchest’ of non-French orchestras and the result is an in depth interpretation, brimming with vigour, then everyone should take note.

‘Emmanuel Krivine is one of today’s greatest conductors’ The Guardian

PLEASE NOTE - The note the information on the cover of the disc is incorrect in that the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 is not conducted by Barbirolli.

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.