Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
C’est l’extase: ten settings of Paul Verlaine for soprano and orchestra (arr. Robin Holloway, 2012)
La mer (1905)
Vannina Santoni (soprano), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Mikko Franck
rec. 2022, Radio France auditorium, Paris, France
French texts and English translations included
Alpha Classics 981 [52]

Debussy’s orchestral style was, paradoxically, at once distinctive and imitable. Indeed, he realized this himself and in his later years got others – Andre Caplet, Charles Koechlin and Henri Büsser – to help score his works. This continued after his death, with orchestrations being made by Ravel and Grainger among composers, and Ansermet and Stokowski among conductors. In recent years there have been contributions from Colin Matthews, John Adams and, as here, Robin Holloway, all composers in their own right.

Indeed, Holloway is a particularly strong contestant in this field. He has long made a study of Debussy, writing a book about him and also orchestrating Debussy’s two-piano work En blanc et noir. Jun Märkl included this and some other orchestrations in his Debussy cycle (review). Here he has chosen some of Debussy’s numerous settings of the symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. The core is the set of six Ariettes oubliées, setting poems from Verlaine’s 1874 collection Romances sans paroles, first published complete in 1903, though written some years earlier. To these Holloway has added four earlier Verlaine settings, the Trois Mélodies, setting poems from the 1889 collection Sagesse, published in 1901, and the single song Mandoline, setting a poem from Fêtes galantes of 1869, from 1890. He has reordered them to make a satisfying sequence and added brief transitions and a more extended orchestral epilogue. These songs are all very attractive, closely following the texts, which are themselves lovely poems.

Debussy wrote these songs during the period when he was also working on his opera Pelléas et Mélisande and indeed he dedicated the Ariettes oubliées on publication to Mary Garden, the creator of the role, as ‘unforgettable Mélisande.’ Holloway has orchestrated them in a style consistent with that of Pelléas: indeed, it is so close that at times it sounds like quotations from that work. Holloway uses a slightly smaller orchestra than the opera, with no heavy brass but with the addition of a bass clarinet. He seems to me to have caught Debussy’s orchestral idiom perfectly.

The result is quite ravishing. I must confess that I do not know these songs in their original piano versions, and I would not have guessed that these were arrangements had I not known. The orchestra supports and never dominates the voice but its piquant colours set off the words most elegantly. I noted, for example, the use of the bass clarinet and harp in the title song, which comes first, the cor anglais in Il pleure dans mon cœur, the oboe nicely contrasted with the cor anglais in Green, and the hunting horns in Chevaux de bois. The material of the final songs, La mer est plus belle, is used in Holloway’s Epilogue.

Holloway made these versions for Michael Tilson Thomas who first performed them, with Renée Fleming as the singer. However, they did not record them and this is the first recording. The singer here is Vannina Santoni, who has an operatic career which has included numerous French roles, including Mélisande, which she has recorded with François-Xavier Roth (David McDade thought her voice too heavy for the role – review, but John Quinn was more positive – review). I thought her voice had a beautiful, fragile quality which she somehow combines with sufficient power when needed. She has complete command of the text with admirably clear diction. I enjoyed her performance very much. Mikko Franck, music director of the orchestra, has previously recorded a good deal of Debussy, and supports Santoni with care.

I wish the rest of the disc had been given to more French orchestral songs. The performance of La mer which we do have is a decent one, which one would be happy to hear in a concert, but nothing special. The first movement, De l’aube à midi sur la mer, is very neatly and precisely played but fails to generate any excitement. The second movement, Jeux de vagues, is much better, while the third, Dialogue du vent et de la mer, is spoiled for me by its omission of the brass fanfares at the second climax. Debussy wrote them, then deleted them, apparently because someone said they sounded like Puccini. Most conductors reinstate them and I consider are right to do so: the passage sounds thin without them. However, no one will be buying this disc for La mer.

The booklet is helpful. I have drawn on this, also on Holloway’s preface to the score and on Jensen’s Master Musicians volume on Debussy. The French texts are included, with an English translation. The recording is excellent. C’est l’extase is quite delightful and deserves every success.

Stephen Barber

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List of songs
C’est l’extase langoureuse
Il pleure dans mon cœur
L’ombre des arbres
Green
Le son du cor s’afflige vers les bois
L’échelonnement des haies
Spleen
Chevaux de bois
Mandoline
La mer est plus belle
Epilogue