DEBUSSY Préludes

Märkl tries new orchestrations of Debussy’s piano Préludes

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Claude Debussy

Label: Naxos

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 76

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: 8572584

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(24) Préludes Claude Debussy, Composer
Claude Debussy, Composer
Jun Märkl, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Now here’s a strange thing: Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of the two books of piano Préludes are already included on the seventh and eighth discs of Naxos’s justly praised nine-CD Debussy box-set from the Orchestre National de Lyon under Jun Märkl, performances that have keen competition from the Hallé on their own label under Sir Mark Elder (it was the Hallé that asked Matthews to undertake the transcriptions in the first place). On this new disc, however, Märkl shifts to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to conduct the Préludes in different orchestral guises by Peter Breiner, a Slovak-born composer and arranger now resident in New York. Much more so than in the Matthews versions, these Breiner ones raise the knotty question of why Debussy’s Préludes need to be orchestrated at all. Their fascination surely lies in the way that Debussy liberated the piano’s expressive and colouristic potential to create images of phenomenal finesse and evocative subtlety.

Matthews harnessed his own creative imagination in rethinking the Préludes in terms of the orchestra, so that they often bear his own personal stamp. His embellishments, his new inflections and his fresh visions add something that is intriguing and ear-catching in itself. Breiner’s are much more straightforward, sometimes dressed in colours that Debussy would have recognised, sometimes not. The impression is of a job professionally done and of performances that do what they have to do and do it well. They do not, however, extinguish the temptation to go back and relish Debussy’s piano originals.

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