Debussy: La Boite A Joujoux

This volume of Debussy’s dramatic works and ballet music is dedicated, by and large, to ‘rarities’ by the composer. Few of Debussy’s works have divided critical opinion more than Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, banned as it was by the Archbishop of Paris six days before its premiere. The beautiful, rarefied Six Épigraphes Antiques were orchestrated by Ernest Ansermet himself and both the Egyptian-based Khamma and La Boîte à joujoux, a ballet based on the secret life of toys, are very rare indeed. Trifle though it might be, the Marche écossaise receives its first release on CD – significant, given the conductor recorded it only once.

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.’

Le Ballet Français is a collection of some of the most beautiful music of all time, featuring the ballet suites from Coppelia, Giselle and Les Sylphides.

This delightful selection features Sir Neville Marriner conducting his Academy of St Martin in the Fields.