It’s a brave, or foolhardy, composer who sets about re-orchestrating Debussy. Yet that is what John Adams has done, in ‘Le jet d’eau’, the third of Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, the first four of which Adams has chosen to score for a modern orchestra. (We are not told why he didn’t include the last one, ‘La mort des amants’.) My immediate reaction, on hearing the opening bars of the first song, ‘Le balcon’, was Debussy à la Korngold. It is perhaps not inappropriate, for the Viennese prodigy was mopping up all the post-Wagner influence he could, at the same time that Debussy was composing his final works. In fact, Adams has done an effective job, and if it makes the songs sound more boisterous, less mysterious than they are in the usual version for voice and piano, he is probably doing his soloist a big favour. By common consent, these are the most difficult of all Debussy’s early songs (they were composed in 1888-89). Susan Graham seems totally in command, her diminuendo on the words ‘Et le charme des soirs’ is tender, and is echoed a few bars later by Adams providing a nostalgic woodwind for the reference to those firelit evenings, ‘par l’audeur du charbon’.

In his book A French Song Companion (OUP: 2002) Graham Johnson despairs of this first song, just because of its apparent ‘orchestral dimensions’. The second song, ‘Harmonie du soir’, brings brings more exquisite soft singing from Graham, and then in ‘Le jet d’eau’ Adams has quite subtly added some percussion and brought out the rippling lower line of the accompaniment. In the final ‘Recueillement’ he brings in the Tristan-like horns to suggest what Chausson called the influence of ‘that frightful Wagner’. Susan Graham takes the last phrase, ‘Entends la douce nuit qui marche’, in one long breath.

There exists a lovely photograph, taken in 1893, the year of Poème de l’amour et de la mer. It shows Debussy, at Chausson’s house, playing the piano. Both composers are in white shirts, surrounded by a peaceful group of family and friends, all in summer clothes, the windows open. I think this is the sort of mood this disc sets out to evoke. Yan Pascal Tortelier and Susan Graham give Chausson’s work a well-nigh perfect performance, capturing the sense of quiet regret at the memory of springtime love that has faded, and of a story that is never quite told.

As for Ravel’s Shéhérazade, like nearly all mezzo-sopranos, Graham is stretched to the limits of her resources by the big climactic phrases in ‘Asie’. She sings a hushed, beautiful ‘La flûte enchantée’ and a rather too sad ‘L’indifférent’ for my taste, but it is all done with a fine line, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing Ravel’s music with a good deal of passion.

Obviously the Adams arrangements are the news here. The other two works have been recorded many times; the only other recent disc to couple them was by Felicity Lott with Armin Jordan and the Suisse Romande Orchestra (Aeon, 2/04), that had two Duparc orchestral songs as the make- weight; the Debussy here occupies centre-stage.