2012-06-13 Denve's Vintage Debussy - ClassicsToday

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Denves Vintage Debussy
June 13, 2012 by David Hurwitz
This is Debussy in the great French
tradition, the sort of playing and
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Artistic Quality: 10
Sound Quality: 10
< RX DUH KHUH Home > Denves Vintage Debussy
Denves Vintage Debussy
Review by: David Hurwitz
This is Debussy in the great French tradition,
the sort of playing and conducting that used to
be associated with national schools of
performance. Of course, Stphane Denve
comes from the right school, but you have to
care enough about it to cultivate the aesthetic,
and for much of the 20th century French
musical institutions did their best to trash
everything that was great in the pre-War style.
The situation with orchestras was even worse.
Not that French orchestras were great in a
technical sense; largely they were not, but they
were distinctive in a way that was particularly
well suited to French repertoire, and they
contained superb individual players. This is why orchestras with a similar sonority, such as
the Czech Philharmonic, with lean strings and prominent, colorful winds, often with a
touch of tangy vibrato in the brass, play the music so well to this day.
What Denve has done is recreate this sonority in his Debussy performances, and the
result is marvelous. This is no mean feat. Todays orchestras do not naturally take to this
style of playing, but this less blended, more individual approach was in fact the authentic
sound of the late 19th and early 20th century. Debussy orchestrates in layers, and
however fuzzy or impressionistic the resultant sonority, these layers should remain
distinct. This means that woodwind timbres must often balance the strings, as they do in
this performance of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, with tellingly supple results. Jeux,
that miracle of slithery half-tints and suggestions, really speaks in this performance; it
becomes a genuine dance drama rather than a mere abstraction.
Much of Denves success also stems from his consistently lively, flowing tempo choices.
These Nuages float across the sky with a welcome sense of purpose and emotional point.
The concentration of the Scottish wind players here, and throughout the three Images, is
particularly impressive. Iberias three movements cohere as a single spanclearly
Debussys intention, but something we seldom actually hear either in concert or on disc.
And as for La Mer, well, its just as exciting as hell. Try the closing bars in the sample below.
The art of playing loud while retaining the integrity of Debussys carefully balanced
textures is another of those virtually lost arts happily recaptured here.
Chandos has provided terrific SACD multichannel sonics for this production, which may
well be headed straight for reference status. A major achievement.
Play Audio:
Recording Details:
Reference Recording: Boulez (DG)
DEBUSSY, CLAUDE:
Images; Jeux; Nocturnes; La Mer; Prlude
l'aprs-midi d'un faune; Marche
cossaise; Printemps; Two movements
from L'Enfant prodigue; Berceuse
hroque
Denve, Stphane (conductor)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra & Chorus
&KDQGR V- 5102(2)
SACD
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