Debussy & Ravel - Orchestral Works

Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

La Mer- Three Symphonic Sketches

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune

Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937)

Pavane pour une infante défunte

Ma Mère l'oye, Movements: Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant

Ma Mère l'oye, Movements: Les entretiens de la belle et la bête

Ma Mère l'oye, Movements: Petit Poucet

Ma Mère l'oye, Movements: Laideronette, Impératrice des Pagode

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam

Carlo Maria Giulini

Recorded: February 23-25, 1994 (tracks 1 to 5) & November 23 & 24, 1989 (tracks 6 to 10)

Review:

Timings for this new La mer – Giulini's third recording – are, perhaps surprisingly, not very different from his first (made in 1962 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, a satisfyingly full, informative and focused Legge/Larter/Kingsway Hall production, last available on an EMI Studio CD, 6/88). But then Giulini's La mer was always broad; in fact, it hardly needs saying that if you are looking for a classic French mobility in any of these works, you should look elsewhere (for La mer, to, say, Monteux, Munch, Paray, Haitink, Karajan and others). Parts of this new Giulini La mer seem less well-prepared than usual. In the opening minutes, one wonders if the rhythmic vagueness is intended, but there are other moments (most obviously, the late oboe in the second movement at 1'34'') where the orchestra lack their usual polish (in matters of ensemble, and tone and pitching). Giulini's fabled shaping, and the lovingly turned details are here, but not perhaps as markedly (or as often) as before, and some of the former animation (as in the second half of the second movement) is missing. Still, the contemplative moments are as poetic as ever, and the grander ones, incomparably grand (mightily spaced timpani grace-notes in the first movement's final sunburst). There is also, where apt, a proper wind primacy; one appreciates this now as an interpretative feature; in the first recording, it might have been thought to be typical of the Legge/Larter productions of the period (the new recording has the benefit of the spacious Concertgebouw acoustic and digital headroom, though a less exceptional clarity in tuttis).

How easy it would be for tone and expression to become overloaded at Giulini's tempos; I never found them so, surely because the expression is real, not affected. The climactic phrase of ''Petit Poucet'' from Ma mere l'oye (the Suite, incidentally; not the complete ballet) are huge and halting but heartfelt; likewise the potentially sticky, but here, heavenly, string portamentos at the end of ''Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant''. The other ''Pavane'', the Pavane pour une infante defunte, is one of a small handful of great performances of this oft recorded miniature – another (much faster) one came from another octogenarian: the LSO/Monteux – caressed into life (listen to both as the silkiest of muted strings take over the second part of the opening theme) and with a prismatic play of colour. Do orchestras specially reserve this kind of concentration and con amore compliance for maestros in their eighties? Certainly, the adoration of the conductor for the music and the players for the conductor is obvious here for the greater part of the disc.'

John Steane (Gramophone)