This version of the hallowed Desormière recording of Pelléas leaves more surface noise than the EMI set without, as far as I can judge, any recompense in the way of brighter voices. The only reason to buy this set might be for Ansermet’s La mer and Toscanini’s L’après-midi, most recently put out by Dante but now hard to find. Personally I carry no torch for either. The La mer recording is dull and bottom-heavy and Ansermet ignores quite a few of Debussy’s tempo markings, while the opening flute phrase of L’après-midi is spoilt by a low B natural hum, persisting into the ‘silent’ bar 6.

Laskine’s classic performance from 1929 (not ‘date unknown’, as here) of the harp Danses comes off best, but is hardly reason enough to buy a three-disc set, especially since it can be found on Pearl with four other interesting Debussy recordings of the same period. A further minus is that the engineers have only allowed around a three-second pause between items, even between Pelléas and La mer.