Customer Reviews

Debussy: Nocturnes; Clair de lune; Pelleas et Melisande - Symphonie

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Sometimes there are CDs where one really doesn't have to spend a lot of time on. This Naxos specimen is a good example. I bought it for the rare 'symphonie', put together by Marius Constant, of the instrumental music for Pelléas. However, when I started out with the familiar Nocturnes I was in for a disappointment. The whole thing sounded curiously underpowered and anemic. As if the orchestra was recorded under a blanket. But it's not the engineering which is to fault (although it's hardly more than a thirteen-to-the-dozen digital product) but the playing. There is not a shred of sparkle in the 'Nuages'. Textures are lifeless and matte. The orchestra sounds tentative, almost morose. No idea what this conductor was up to. The Orchestre National de Lyon does have a fine pedigree in Debussy, however. Serge Baudo was at its helm for many years. He must curse when he hears this recording. 'Fêtes' is slightly less flaccid but totally unexceptional. The 'Sirènes' are sung in a weird, undifferentiated legato. It's as far removed of Van Beinum's memorable and sprightly rendition as you can think off. Here and there Märkl tries too hard to do something different. The result is highly contrived, even outright fake. I got the distinct impression that this is a conductor that has no ideas at all and seeks escape in watery colours, uniformily subdued dynamics and some trivial effects. The Pelléas symphony fares a little better, although we largely find the same approach. It's listenable, however. I didn't bother to spend time on the fillers. What a strange, amateuristic release. It's a mystery why Naxos decided to entrust a full 6-CD cycle of all Debussy's orchestral works to this combo. I won't investigate the other volumes, that's for sure.

This disc is the second of two now published. Is Naxos going to give us a complete set? One hopes. This second volume begins with a synthesis of music from the composer's sole opera, Pelleas et Melisande. Think something like the old Stokowski arrangements of Parsifal or Tristan, though of course this is nearly archetypal French Debussy, not Wagner. Then the second disc continues a famous orchestration of the Clair de lune from the solo piano Suite Bergamasque, followed by the three Nocturnes (Nuages, Fetes, Sirenes). Next to last we get the berceuse heroique. And lastly, this second disc wraps up by offering three newly orchestrated versions of three of the solo piano etudes (Nos. 8.10.12). The orchestrator is Michael Jarrell, a Swiss composer born in 1958. Jarrell has written music in many forms, won notable music prizes for his compositions, and teaches or has taught in Vienna and Geneva. So far, Jarrell has written one opera, a spoken arts work, Cassandra, that was premiered at the California USA Ojai Festival.

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Right from this disc's beginning tracks, we can hear that we are in for some special readings of familiar Debussy. The ONL departments do themselves proud, and sound to be fully engaged with the music, as with their leader Jun Markl. The Pelleas et Melisande synthesis is generous and comprehensive, rather as the previous Stokowski synthesis of Parsifal or Tristan excerpts. Consistent with the interpretive grip in volume one of this emerging Naxos Debussy series, the band and this conductor have a decidedly modern or post-modern take on what makes the composer tick. A subtle inflection, grounded in great, burning clarity of textures seems to inform all the readings on disc two. We can hear plenty of tone color, especially from the woodwinds; but all is etched, fiery, crystalline. This music happens in all its details revealed, as well as in its constantly shifting and developing intuitive forms. For once, vivid colors do not mean any neglect of how phrasing mirrors musical narrative flow, all path-breaking and innovative. Clair de lune is still very attractive, but stuns a listener as more of an abstract, sculpted sound-shape in moving time, than as a picturesque evocation of moonlight as, say, a Late Romantic composer might have been moved by extra-musical inspirations.

A polar contrast to this reading would be, for example, the several stereo versions of Debussy published once upon a glorious time by Stokowski leading different orchestras. There clair de lune is a rich bon-bon, sensuous, sweet, and supremely balanced in its velvety, chocolaty goodness. Like Haitink or Dutoit or Jean Martinon in an EMI set, the Nocturnes drift (Nuages), dance festively (Fetes), or sweep over us with mysterious and dangerous enchantments (Sirenes); but impress ears and mind with their structural granite, not just their vivid colors or intuitive musical logic.

Markl's genius with the ONL inhabits another realm, still brilliant and sensuous and diaphanous - but altogether cooler, though far, far from cold. I do not want to do without the Stokowski or Dutoit or Haitink or Martinon readings, but I like this reading very much, too.

Indeed, these readings are so engaging that one laments the lack of an SACD multichannel disc to further immerse oneself aurally in the bending and swooshing of colors and lights, even cooler, even a tad greater in abstracted essences.

On to Debussy's Berceuse heroique, and the three etudes orchestrated by Michael Jarrell. These are lovely episodes to wrap up the second disc, without neglecting the established sonic fact that the opera synthesis and the three Nocturnes are the substance. Given the etched hand that guides these later musics, a listener may be reminded of the Third Vienna School, and especially of Anton Webern. Somehow saying a lot, and saying more than has to be spelled out in more typical western musical manners, repetitive, developmental - alternative to the usual. Markl and ONL again emphasize the contrapuntal, as if Debussy knew and drew upon more from our medieval polyphonist-baroque heritage than most of us modern-eared listeners might realize. Indeed, so far: all the disc's readings open up such musings about forebears and continuities of deeper musical intellect.

All the rhythms are subtly sprung, and the overall sense of fire and clarity remains to light our audience paths - even if we are occupying vivid intellectual and imaginary realms which seem to have more to do with the fractal ratios of Nature revealed, or the mysterious observational vagaries of quarks - than with an older, post-Romantic Debussy.

Kudos, too, to the ladies of the MDR Leipzig Radio Chorus, who appear in Sirenes, the third of the three Nocturnes. As it happens, Jun Markl is also leader appointed to the MDR Leipzig Radio, so his knowing invitation to the German chorus makes family sense, at least at this point in his career. True to interpretive commitments, the chorus fits right in with the cooler, wiser hands at the helm. The siren songs at work, however, are less those of the fabulous, harpy-like sisters of Greek mythology, than those of the great cosmic unknowns of a far-flung field of far star-systems whose galactic noise we now sweep with great satellites and telescopes, journeying outward in orbits of patient technical questing, or tilted upwards beyond our own particular Sol.

Whew. The recorded competition is stiff for all of this disc's choices, except for the Michael Jarrell orchestrations of the piano etudes, and the Marius Constant orchestral synthesis from Pelleas et Melisande. Neither seems to have been recorded previously.

As with volume one, other choices easily spring to mind, established, long-compelling, long musically attractive. Remember? Stokowski, Pierre Boulez, Jean Martinon (in a wonderful and warmly read complete set on EMI), Charles Dutoit in Montreal (superbly elegant in very good sound), and Yan Pascal Tortelier (on Chandos, another complete set). How about Carlo Maria Giulini with the London Philharmonia in an EMI Great Recording of the Century? How about Colin Davis with the Boston Symphony? Two early markers include, an import Eloquence label recording with Eduard van Beinum in Amsterdam, and an Ades label recording with Manuel in Parish with the French opera band. Another real treasure is Abbado's stunning readings with the Boston Symphony, way back when that orchestra was trying to lure him in, as possible new music director. The BSO will simply amaze us with its superb abilities, often not completely captured in all of its catalog. You can get that gem from Arkiv Music. (In SACD, further add in, Gary Bertini in Cologne, and Paavo Jarvi in Cincinnati.) Amazon lists well over a hundred recordings of one or more Nocturnes, not all of which may readily be in the commercial catalogs. You could almost shut your eyes and grab a fistful without necessarily getting a really awful performance.

Okay. Add this one to the end of the keeper list, ranked higher rather than lower. Sound is very good for regular red book CD stereo. I do not know what the engineering difficulties of the ONL hall in France may be, but if they exist at all, they have been well enough resolved by the recording team. For this disc, sound is not a detriment. The second volume of Naxos' new Debussy series represents not only another stand-out of the existing Naxos catalog, plus a second gold star in the Naxos series; but a stand out among competing Debussy performances. When music gets this good I have trouble hanging on to my reviewer task, to make fine distinctions between the top top and the nearly top top. Just enjoy this Debussy, and check out the first Naxos disc, too.

This was the first installment in the now six-part orchestral music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) from Jun Markl and the National Orchestra of Lyon (France.) As my score indicates, I didn't like this collection as much as other reviewers including those that graded it with raves for classical music magazines. I don't contest that conductor and orchestra have delivered meaningful performances or that Naxos has failed to live up to its standards. I find I cannot sidle to the style chosen for some of the music and, in larger disappointment, to some of the music itself.

The latter disappointment is mine and should not be blamed on the forces here. Not being much of an opera buff, I've never heard or witnessed Debussy's opera from which the 25-minute symphonic suite Pelleas et Melisande preseneted here is drawn. Like Leopold Stokowski often did with the music of Richard Wagner, Marius Constant created a symphony of orchestral excerpts and interludes from the opera, then put it together to mimic the story of the star-crossed lovers.

To my ears, Constant's synthesis is not unlike that other orchestral Pelleas und Melisande, the one that came from the pen of dodecaphonic master Arnold Schoenberg in his late romantic era. Composed 1902-03, almost identical with Debussy's opera, that Pelleas is a purely orchestral rendering of the saga. This one, under Markl's baton, sounded strangely familiar to me in both content and temperament. Once I listened to the Schoenberg epic after hearing the Constant creation, I connected the dots between the two.

Perhaps needless to say, while I adore many of Schoenberg's beyond tonality masterpieces in 12 tone and before, I can't say the same for his late romantic music. Now, I can say same about Marius Constant's orchestral rendering of the Debussy opera. Furthermore, there's little reason to think that, if one does like this arrangement, Markl's surpasses the still-sometimes available version from Serge Baudo whose orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, with its Eastern European wail, may not be considered de rigeur for French music...until you heard it. Baudo also coupled Sibelius' version of the Pelleas and Melisande story.

While this is not the entirety of this collection, it is surely the most significant piece. The next most important item are the three Nocturnes that brought Debussy his first legend about the turn of the century, Nuages (night clouds), Fetes (festivals) and Sirenes (sirens.) I have owned and heard many great performances of this music and have a soft spot for Stokowski and, to lesser extent, Boulez. While Markl and the Lyon orchestra give creditable, perhaps even better, performances, I heard nothing in this very fine-sounding collection that would suggest I part with my tried and true loves from the past. A straightforward Germanic martial rhythm toward the end of Fetes rattled my sensibilities when I first heard it under Markly and Lyon, and I found the Sirenes almost completely lacking atmosphere.

The other music on the disk, Clair de lune for orchestra arranged by Andre Caplet, Berecuse heroique and three etudes orchestrated by Michael Jarrell from Debussy's 1915 collection of a dozen masterpieces, are better. This is, to my knowledge, the only available recording of the latter, whose orchestral execution rather defies the mirrored imagery of the music when delivered on the piano. In orchestral form, they are less atmospheric and more formidable, especially the Etude No. 9, Debussy's repeated notes etude. No. 10 is closer to its piano organism under Markly and the orchestra.

For me, good as they are, these are not enough to make this collection memorable. Naxos offers typically fine sound, production values, notes and packaging, but this isn't a keeper for me. It could be for you, just as his has been for critics around the world and elsewhere on this page. I'll soon be reviewing another of the Markl set where he delivers the orchestral music from Debussy's incidental music to the play Le Martyre de San Sebastian; I'm hoping for a better outcome with that one.