Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Preludes, Books I (1910) and II (1913) (orch. Peter Breiner)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jun Märkl
rec. Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 16-18 June 2011
NAXOS 8.572584 [36.54 + 39.31]
Not satisfied with his recording of Colin Matthews’s
orchestration of the Debussy Préludes in his complete set of
the composer’s orchestral music for Naxos with the Lyon orchestra, Jun
Märkl now turns to a new orchestration of the same pieces with the RSNO
for the same label. The arrangement here is by Peter Breiner, who unlike
Colin Matthews keeps more strictly to Debussy’s own piano scores. He
also adopts a more authentically Debussian orchestral style which in many
ways is reminiscent of the work of Caplet and Büsser during the
composer’s own lifetime. Indeed the setting of Canopes sounds
uncannily close to Caplet’s orchestration of the opening of Le
Martyre de Saint-Sébastien. We are given very little
information about Breiner’s approach to his task, beyond the statement
that he undertook his orchestration “for the present recording.”
The internet informs us that was born in 1957 in Slovakia and that he is
known among other things for his orchestrations of the Beatles and Elvis
Presley; that he lived in Canada from 1992-2007; that he now resides in New
York; and that he is a passionate soccer player, as well as a television
personality in Slovakia. Quite a polymath, in fact; and he does a really
professional job here.
Not all Debussy’s preludes lend themselves easily to
orchestral treatment - they are too intrinsically pianistic for that - and
some of the tracks here are a little too noisily scored to be totally
convincing. But others are superbly handled, not least the lambent clarinet
solo that opens La fille aux cheveux de lin. The longest of the
pieces, La cathédrale engloutie, probably stands to gain most
from orchestral treatment. In my review of Märkl’s recording of
the Colin Matthews orchestrations (review; not to forget Elder’s cycle
on Hallé) I pointed out that
“There is in particular a real problem at the beginning in the
original piano version. The principal melody is stated against a background
of a distantly tolling bell. This is perfectly clear in the piano score, but
in performance the sound of the ‘bell’ obscures the melodic line
and requires very careful handling by the pianist if it is to ‘come
through’ - which it very rarely does successfully. In an orchestral
version the variety of available colour makes it easy to differentiate the
two elements.” It is interesting to note the different ways in which
Colin Matthews, Peter Breiner and Leopold Stokowski approach the matter. An
examination of their various approaches to this one Prelude may help
to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of this particular set of
orchestrations.
The prelude itself begins with a passage of six bars of widely
spaced piano harmony, clearly intended to be blurred by sustained pedals.
Although Debussy gives no precise indications for pedalling at any point,
his intentions are apparent from his direction Dans une brume doucement
sonore. Stokowski conveys this through an extreme almost echo effect
which aptly conveys the idea of the watery atmosphere surrounding the sunken
cathedral. Breiner sticks much more closely to Debussy’s actual
written notes, with clarity given precedence over atmosphere; and Matthews
comes somewhere between the two. When we come to the initial appearance of
the first melody to which I referred in the previous paragraph, Stokowski
represents the tolling bell with a reiterated note on the glockenspiel (very
forward in his own recording) while Matthews uses a tubular bell in the
octave below, which allows the melody to come forward more clearly. Breiner
does not use any bell effect at all, although he achieves a haunting effect
with the melody doubled in string harmonics, and this altogether rather
misses the point of Debussy’s reiterated Es. After two bars in which
the opening material returns (now marked by Debussy sans nuances) the
music moves forward in a passage marked Peu à peu sortant de la
brume, in which the cathedral emerges from the depths towards the
daylight. The problem here comes with the semi-quaver middle-register
passages indicated by Debussy as marqué - just how prominent
should they be? Breiner hardly brings them forward at all; Stokowski
reinforces them with horns and bells; and Matthews reinforces them with
horns alone, which seems to get the balance about right. Eight bars later
there is a high descending figure which again suggests a peal of bells, and
this causes difficulty to all the orchestrators. Stokowski and Matthews both
give the passage to violins, although the passage is perilously high as they
attack the first note; Breiner uses woodwind, which is both safer and sounds
better. Six bars later the sunken cathedral is fully revealed in a passage
where deep tolling bells underlie an organ-like chorale melody. Matthews
scores the chorale for brass; Breiner scores it more satisfactorily for
woodwind and strings; Stokowski scores it for full orchestra with octave
doublings in tremolo strings and high woodwind, which achieves the
right sort of grandeur but sacrifices the organ quality. At the end of the
chorale there is a rising three-note figure which all three orchestrators
assign to the brass, but Matthews extends this upwards into the woodwind and
adds another bar leading to the imitative bell sounds which follow.
The initial melody then returns, marked expressif et
concentré, and all three orchestrators again treat it
differently. Stokowski gives it to bass clarinet with strengthening from
what sounds like a muted tuba; Breiner gives it to the bassoon, solo; and
Matthews gives it to the cellos, which better fulfils Debussy’s
additional instruction Dans une expression allant grandissant. The
tune builds to a climax and then subsides into a repetition of the chorale
theme, now marked Comme une echo and floating over a figuration
marked Flottant et sourd. Stokowski and Breiner both treat this quite
literally, reducing the scoring of the chorale theme to a whisper on
woodwind and tremolando strings; but Matthews does something quite
different and rather more imaginative. He elaborates the
‘floating’ figuration (adding some bars to the music in the
process) so that the strings whisper around the chorale theme in a manner
that suggests Debussy’s earlier portrait of the sea in La mer.
This is quite simply a magical passage in Matthews’s hands, and
neither of the treatments of Stokowski or Breiner approach the same
seductive effect. However there is a flip-side to this in the final six bars
of the prelude, where Debussy indicates that the music should return to the
sound of the opening - Dans la sonorité du début.
Matthews needs to wind down his elaboration of the string figuration, and
this process extends and overlays the final bars in a way that makes
recapture of the initial sonorities unachievable. Breiner manages to return
to the notes of the opening without any the need to add any additional bars,
but then rather misses the point by giving the repetition of the opening
phrases a new and different scoring. Stokowski alone here manages to
recapture the original mood and sound, blurring his strings and woodwind in
a manner that suggests the use of the sustaining pedal on the piano.
This may seem a very elaborate analysis of what is after all just
one of the 24 tracks on this CD, but the comparison is illuminating and
typical of the whole. Stokowski did not of course orchestrate all the
Préludes, and one’s reaction to Breiner’s
treatment of them here must depend entirely on the listener’s reaction
to Matthews’s more idiosyncratic though not unidiomatic approach to
the music. He gives us Debussy reflected through the mind of another
composer with ideas of his own; Breiner gives us a version of the
Préludes as they might have been more straightforwardly
orchestrated by one of Debussy’s friends or pupils, but does not
achieve Matthews’s sometimes transcendentally beautiful textures.
It is clear than Jun Märkl enjoys both approaches, but in his
performances of La cathédrale engloutie it is clear that he
draws an even more extreme distinction between the two. Where in his Lyon
box of Debussy he allows the Colin Matthews orchestration to extend to 7:14,
here he shaves over two minutes off that time, dispatching the Breiner
arrangement in a mere 5:03 - and the difference is not accounted for by the
two or three additional bars that Matthews adds to Debussy’s original.
This is indeed a very brisk and efficient performance of the piece, and
Märkl cannot avoid the sense of unnecessary hurry (for example at 3:46
into the track). A more usual duration would be around the 6’30”
mark. This is rather an exception in Märkl’s performances, most
of which are considerably more measured - he takes 4:40 for the final
Feux d’artifice (as he did in his recording of the Matthews
version) as against Gieseking’s 3:23.
Märkl, as I observed in my lengthy review of his complete
Debussy orchestral music recorded in Lyon, is a conductor who obviously
wants to explore every aspect of the composer and can often achieve
enthralling results by taking extremely slow speeds in the music. He clearly
enjoys Breiner’s often quirky orchestrations, but on a personal level
I must say that I find Colin Matthews’s freer treatment of the scores
pays additional rewards. Treat this disc therefore as a supplement to
Märkl’s Lyon readings of the Matthews orchestrations, rather than
a replacement for it. The orchestral performances are assured, and the sound
is very nicely detailed.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
The orchestral performances are assured, and the sound is very nicely detailed.