There hasn't exactly been a flood of recordings marking the centenary of Debussy's death in 1918, but here's a fitting observance from Pablo Heras-Casado, featuring a Philharmonia Orchestra that's absolutely at the top of its game and able to follow the Spanish conductor through his low-volume but intense Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. The program is an intelligent one for general listeners, pairing distinctive readings of two standards with the more unusual Fragments Symphoniques from Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien ...
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There hasn't exactly been a flood of recordings marking the centenary of Debussy's death in 1918, but here's a fitting observance from Pablo Heras-Casado, featuring a Philharmonia Orchestra that's absolutely at the top of its game and able to follow the Spanish conductor through his low-volume but intense Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. The program is an intelligent one for general listeners, pairing distinctive readings of two standards with the more unusual Fragments Symphoniques from Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (1912), extracts from a five-hour set of incidental music for a play by Gabriele d'Annunzio. This work, perhaps because it was partially orchestrated by Debussy's friend André Caplet and thus violates the myth of the solitary genius, is not much played, but it has dramatic ideas not found elsewhere in Debussy's output and is as close as he came to an instrumental counterpart to Pélleas et Mélisande. Sample Heras-Casado's masterly way with the opening of La Mer: he gives himself room to...
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