At the end of next week, Naxos will release a nine-CD box of the “Complete Orchestral Works” of Claude Debussy. (It is currently available for download in its entirety through ClassicsOnline.) All performances are by the Orchestre National de Lyon under the baton of Jun Märkl. Additional resources include the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) Radio Choir of Leipzig, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, clarinetist Paul Meyer, saxophonist Alexandre Doisy, and harpist Emmanuel Ceysson. Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders; and visitors to the page for this collection will quickly discover that three other sets have been frequently visited for comparison shopping: a four-CD box from Brilliant Classics, a four-CD set from Decca, and an eight-CD EMI Classics set that covers the complete orchestral music of both Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Thus, the curious comparison shopper may well wonder what there is to fill nine CDs.
If we consult the Works page for Debussy on Grove Music Online, which is based on François Lesure’s 1977 catalog, corrected in 1990 by Yves Lado-Bordowsky, we discover that the entries under “Orchestral” are relatively sparse. To these we can add those under “Ballets,” and “Orchestrations.” However, the number is still relatively modest. Four CDs seems like a reasonable number, so why has it been more than doubled by Naxos?
The answer is that the producers of this collection have decided to offer a relatively comprehensive (if not exhaustive) survey of orchestration efforts by others, including several of Debussy’s major contemporaries (such as André Caplet, Charles Koechlin, and Maurice Ravel), as well as more recent composers, such as Robin Holloway, Colin Matthews, and Tony Finno. This last composer is probably better known for more commercial efforts (such as his gig as Staff Arranger for American Idol); but he is responsible for an orchestral arrangement of Debussy’s early B minor symphony, which the composer himself never orchestrated. (A four-hand version of the opening Allegro movement was published in 1933.)
This makes the Naxos collection a rather unique take on orchestral Debussy. Personally, I prefer to listen to Debussy’s piano compositions given by a good piano performance. On the other hand there are so few opportunities to listen to any of Caplet’s original compositions that I welcomed the chance to hear his orchestrations. At the very least his treatment of the “Clair de lune” movement from Suite bergamasque shows a particularly refined sense of subtle sonority that stands above any of the lusher interpretations that besiege us through piped-in music systems. It is also worth observing that Matthews was scrupulously thorough in accounting for all 24 of Debussy’s piano preludes; and his interpretations “parse” the scores in ways that may well inform some pianists about Debussy’s underlying grammatical structure.
The bottom line is that there is nothing quite like this collection; and, while there are many ways to take issue with some of the content, I suspect that most listeners will view this as a project worth the undertaking.
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