If only all CD programmes were as ingeniously compiled as this! Yet, if only, amongst Muti's French seascapes, he had paced La mer with a more natural mobility and flexibility—'natural' as in nature's way (I make no apologies for stressing this obvious point). Debussy's translation of the ever-changing and apparently formless into a structure of shape and purpose is a finely balanced miracle of musical technique—one that surely deserves respect—and a full realization of Debussy's precisely planned indications should be an ideal fervently to be sought (the score as a finishing-point, not as in Muti's case, along with, say, Stokowski—Decca, 9/71, nla—Bernstein and a great many others, as a starting point, or for occasional reference). Yes, I know I'm living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but so much of Muti's 'reading' seems to me either ill-considered or not considered at all. In the small print, the booklet announces Muti's use of a specially 'corrected' edition which no doubt explains the omission of the brass fanfares from four bars after fig. 59 (from 7'20'') in the finale (nothing unusual: see Baudo, Maazel, Giulini, Ingelbrecht and others). But what of the drastic slowings for the solo violin section in the first movement (from 3'15''; a brief glimpse of an oil slick perhaps?), or for the finale's main theme (from 1'29''; rhythmic input of accompanimental strings compromised); where Debussy asks to yield un peu and tres legerement respectively? And what of the en animant beaucoup from two bars after fig. 28 (3'19'') in ''Jeux de vagues'' where Muti remains rigidly in tempo? I'll admit that some of Debussy's metronome marks seem a little crazy, but surely it is not a good idea to start the first movement's second half as slowly as this? Muti's finale, too, is measured and massive, its final pages far from being the joyous, liberating experience they can be under conductors such as Karajan and Haitink, though I'll concede that the still calm of its central section is quite mesmeric; as is the comparable moment (from 4'28'') in a superb Ravel Une barque.
EMI's contained sound is less of a drawback in the haunting Chausson Poeme, and Muti seems far more inside the idiom; it emerges here richly fragrant with copious suspensory haltings before moments of release. LS greeted the last recording of the piece from Finnie, Tortelier and the Ulster Orchestra, with the words ''an air of poetic melancholy hangs over the whole of this disc''. I would observe that from Meier and Muti you have a complementary account (a whole tone higher) very much with the whiff of the opera stage about it, and quite a Wagnerian one at that. Tortelier, it seems to me, was keen to play down the Wagnerian element, for example, the Parsifal-like tread of cellos and basses in the sombre et solennel section that follows the third part's opening verse, and his concerns included a lucidity and limpidity of texture not always matched here. Meier for Muti has a rather cavalier attitude to consonants (''Comme des fronts de morts'' without the D on ''des'' is just one instance), and is occasionally too loud. Her matter-of-fact delivery of the final lines is particularly worrying heard after the heartbreaking resignation of a Finnie, or especially, a Ferrier. Nevertheless ''the inexpressible horror of dead love'' (Part 3 at 4'30'') is uniquely hair-raising, and there is much else that is both gripping and gorgeous.'