DEBUSSY: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (arr. Walter); Violin Sonata in G Minor; Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp; Cello Sonata in D Minor; String Quartet in G Minor – The Nash Ensemble – Hyperion CDA68463 (76:00) (1/10/25) [Distr. by PIAS] *****:
Celebrating their 60th anniversary, The Nash Ensemble, among the music world’s most versatile collaborations, recorded the diverse sonatas of Claude Debussy 10-11 December 2023 and the String Quartet 28 February 2024. Only the Quartet and the famous Prélude boast an early genesis, 1893-1894; while the other chamber works derive from an effort to create a set of six sonatas, 1915-1917, that would, in Debussy’s words to a youthful Francis Poulenc, “regain a hold on our ancient traditions: those whose beauty we have let slip through us, but which have not ceased to exist.” Debussy managed to create three of his intended project of six, but terminal illness robbed him and us of his late, mature thoughts in the chamber music medium.
The etiology of The Afternoon of a Faun has become common parlance, its basis in the Symbolist poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, with its suggestive incantation of Arcadian imagery. Debussy’s composition embodies a quietly innovative revolution in music, dispensing with traditional form to invoke a fabric of harmonic and syntactical subtlety, in which instrumental colors virtually melt into one another, as the timbres reach beyond their usual tessitura and encroach on their neighbors. In this arrangement: string quintet, wind quintet, harp and crotales. The Nash Ensemble employs among the members the exotic sound of the crotales – played by Richard Benjafield – a percussion instrument resembling a xylophone in the form of flat cymbals. Philippa Davies provides the principal flute part, moving through whole tones while horn and harp provide alluring glissandos and invocations to the Faun’s erotic dreams. A sense of antique flirtatiousness and sunny mirth permeates this sonorous reading, quite special in the annuls of Debussy recordings.
The 1917 Violin Sonata follows, here performed by Stephanie Gonley and pianist Alasdair Beatson. Among Debussy’s last, creative thoughts, the piece projects a haunted nostalgia, perhaps touched by gypsy scales as the opening movement modulates from G minor to C major. The second movement (Intermède: Fantasque et léger) interjects an animated sense of impish buoyancy, both playful and introspective. Beatson has a thin nasal tone, quite reminiscent of the French masters of this work, Thibaud and Poulet. The final movement (Finale: Très animé) reintroduces material from the first movement, but the mood shifts to what the composer described as “tumultuous joy.” The keyboard part seems to invoke a new, blurred world of transient impressions, fugitive visions, built on fragments of the motivic materials. Both instruments sail up and down modal scales, becoming at the second passing, emboldened and urgent, the composer’s last, defiant gasp.
Principals Philippa Davies, flute; Lawrence Power, viola; and Lucy Wakeford, harp collaborate in Debussy’s 1916 Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, which the composer called “frightfully mournful.” Yet, the bright, mercurial coloration of the opening harp arpeggio and flute aeronautics belie the sadness, since the quick, dotted rhythms and viola tremolos invoke a softly romping, water-color transparency that reminds us of Seurat’s paintings. After the rather dreamy first movement, the second movement, Interlude, marked Tempo di minuetto, increases the “pastoral” effect claimed by the first movement. The spontaneous, mysterious freshness of the instrumentation testifies to a youthful energy that spites Debussy’s debilitating, final illness. The last movement proves the most exotic, the most “Eastern.” Marked Finale: Allegro moderato ma risoluto, the music becomes flamboyant and fiery, the pentatonic tune given a thicker texture and a lower range of colors. The piano piece Pagodes seems immanent at every bar, but here the rhythmic colors feel unleashed, especially in the viola part. The flute posits a luxurious dance, and the violin and harp contribute their flair for seduction.
Debussy’s Cello Sonata of 1915, the first of the set to be completed, won the composer’s admiration for “its proportions and form – almost classical in the good sense of the word.” Within a refined, cyclical structure, Debussy finds room for harmonic and syntactical adventurousness. The first movement, Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto, has the piano, Simon Crawford Phillips, announce a theme that rings with Medieval troubadour gestures. Three motifs evolve, rather undeveloped as such, but rather placed in tandem. The cello, Adrian Brendel, has the second theme, melancholy, followed by a third theme that relishes rising major and minor fourths. The opening material repeats and then exchanges the alternate modes as well. The second movement seems the most audacious, a Sérénade in the style of a street, falsetto-voiced guitar, a parody of the Pierrot character from the commedia dell’arte that Schumann cherished. Eerie and ghostly, the piece moves by strums and plucked chords, awkward rhythmic impulses, a drunken fit of moonlight. The Finale: Animé, léger et nerveux, has the cello part sing luxuriously, though the tempo shifts suddenly in modulating tonalities that well resist the lure of the home key of D minor. The work concludes with a vigorous thump from both players.
Likely inspired by the 1890 premiere of César Franck’s String Quartet, the thirty-one-year-old Debussy tried his hand at the medium in 1893, utilizing the cyclic technique that economically remolds early materials through variation. Melodically speaking, Debussy’s familiarity with the Russians, Borodin and Tchaikovsky, added to the attractive contours of his design. Among the many admirers of this work have been composer Paul Dukas and my own teacher at SUNY Binghamton, Jean Casadesus, who lauded the exquisite, slow third movement. Jean Casadeus had requested the movement be heard at his funeral. Belgian critic Octave Maus called the scherzo second movement “delicious in its grace and ingenuity.” The four principals of The Nash Ensemble – Benjamin Nabarro and Jonathan Stone, violins; Lars Anders Tomter, viola; and Adrian Brendel, cello – mesh seamlessly to provide a coherent, intelligently zestful rendition.
The opening, modal theme dominates the entire work, and the movement, Animé et très décidé, moves in fragmented gestures in G minor, D minor, and then returns to the home key. Only as the movement nears the conclusion does Debussy offer, quite conscious of the liberties he takes, a flowing second subject, which then undergoes a series of variants in lieu of classical development. The second movement, in G major, Assez vif et bien rythmé, reworks the material of movement one. The striking sonorities of plucked notes and acerbic melodic lines lead to a melody that colorfully toys with modal E-flat major. A dervish quality suffuses the dazzling lines, with their tendency to break off deliberately to spite our sense of continuity. The third movement, Andantino, doucement expressif, projects a haunted, thoughtful atmosphere, what Edward Lockspeiser termed “a trance-like mood.” Debussy plays with enharmonic hues, D-flat major and C# minor, in which the two low instruments figure prominently in the special sonority of this magnificent utterance. The last movement, Très modéré – En animant peu à peu – Très mouvementé et avec passion, modulates freely with the initial theme among D-flat major, G minor, C major, and G major, establishing in short order a kaleidoscopic vision that justifies its “impressionistic” label for many auditors. Cellist Adrian Brendel has distinguished himself through much of this disc as a talent of note. Parenthetically, Debussy, to assure his public of his serious, musical intent, added a random Op. 10 to the score, possibly to encourage publishers to seek the missing opera.
—Gary Lemco
More information through Amazon
