Not satisfied with his recording of Colin Matthews’s orchestration
of the Debussy Préludes in his complete set of
the composer’s orchestral music for Naxos with the Lyon
orchestra, Jun Märkl now turns to a new orchestration of
the same pieces with the RSNO for the same label. The arrangement
here is by Peter Breiner, who unlike Colin Matthews keeps more
strictly to Debussy’s own piano scores. He also adopts
a more authentically Debussian orchestral style which in many
ways is reminiscent of the work of Caplet and Büsser during
the composer’s own lifetime. Indeed the setting of Canopes
sounds uncannily close to Caplet’s orchestration of the
opening of Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien.
We are given very little information about Breiner’s approach
to his task, beyond the statement that he undertook his orchestration
“for the present recording.” The internet informs
us that was born in 1957 in Slovakia and that he is known among
other things for his orchestrations of the Beatles and Elvis
Presley; that he lived in Canada from 1992-2007; that he now
resides in New York; and that he is a passionate soccer player,
as well as a television personality in Slovakia. Quite a polymath,
in fact; and he does a really professional job here.
Not all Debussy’s preludes lend themselves easily to orchestral
treatment - they are too intrinsically pianistic for that -
and some of the tracks here are a little too noisily scored
to be totally convincing. But others are superbly handled, not
least the lambent clarinet solo that opens La fille aux cheveux
de lin. The longest of the pieces, La cathédrale
engloutie, probably stands to gain most from orchestral
treatment. In my review of Märkl’s recording of the
Colin Matthews orchestrations (review; not to forget Elder’s cycle on
Hallé) I pointed out that “There
is in particular a real problem at the beginning in the original
piano version. The principal melody is stated against a background
of a distantly tolling bell. This is perfectly clear in the
piano score, but in performance the sound of the ‘bell’
obscures the melodic line and requires very careful handling
by the pianist if it is to ‘come through’ - which
it very rarely does successfully. In an orchestral version the
variety of available colour makes it easy to differentiate the
two elements.” It is interesting to note the different
ways in which Colin Matthews, Peter Breiner and Leopold Stokowski
approach the matter. An examination of their various approaches
to this one Prelude may help to illuminate the strengths
and weaknesses of this particular set of orchestrations.
The prelude itself begins with a passage of six bars of widely
spaced piano harmony, clearly intended to be blurred by sustained
pedals. Although Debussy gives no precise indications for pedalling
at any point, his intentions are apparent from his direction
Dans une brume doucement sonore. Stokowski conveys this
through an extreme almost echo effect which aptly conveys the
idea of the watery atmosphere surrounding the sunken cathedral.
Breiner sticks much more closely to Debussy’s actual written
notes, with clarity given precedence over atmosphere; and Matthews
comes somewhere between the two. When we come to the initial
appearance of the first melody to which I referred in the previous
paragraph, Stokowski represents the tolling bell with a reiterated
note on the glockenspiel (very forward in his own recording)
while Matthews uses a tubular bell in the octave below, which
allows the melody to come forward more clearly. Breiner does
not use any bell effect at all, although he achieves a haunting
effect with the melody doubled in string harmonics, and this
altogether rather misses the point of Debussy’s reiterated
Es. After two bars in which the opening material returns (now
marked by Debussy sans nuances) the music moves forward
in a passage marked Peu à peu sortant de la brume,
in which the cathedral emerges from the depths towards the daylight.
The problem here comes with the semi-quaver middle-register
passages indicated by Debussy as marqué - just
how prominent should they be? Breiner hardly brings them forward
at all; Stokowski reinforces them with horns and bells; and
Matthews reinforces them with horns alone, which seems to get
the balance about right. Eight bars later there is a high descending
figure which again suggests a peal of bells, and this causes
difficulty to all the orchestrators. Stokowski and Matthews
both give the passage to violins, although the passage is perilously
high as they attack the first note; Breiner uses woodwind, which
is both safer and sounds better. Six bars later the sunken cathedral
is fully revealed in a passage where deep tolling bells underlie
an organ-like chorale melody. Matthews scores the chorale for
brass; Breiner scores it more satisfactorily for woodwind and
strings; Stokowski scores it for full orchestra with octave
doublings in tremolo strings and high woodwind, which
achieves the right sort of grandeur but sacrifices the organ
quality. At the end of the chorale there is a rising three-note
figure which all three orchestrators assign to the brass, but
Matthews extends this upwards into the woodwind and adds another
bar leading to the imitative bell sounds which follow.
The initial melody then returns, marked expressif et concentré,
and all three orchestrators again treat it differently. Stokowski
gives it to bass clarinet with strengthening from what sounds
like a muted tuba; Breiner gives it to the bassoon, solo; and
Matthews gives it to the cellos, which better fulfils Debussy’s
additional instruction Dans une expression allant grandissant.
The tune builds to a climax and then subsides into a repetition
of the chorale theme, now marked Comme une echo and floating
over a figuration marked Flottant et sourd. Stokowski
and Breiner both treat this quite literally, reducing the scoring
of the chorale theme to a whisper on woodwind and tremolando
strings; but Matthews does something quite different and rather
more imaginative. He elaborates the ‘floating’ figuration
(adding some bars to the music in the process) so that the strings
whisper around the chorale theme in a manner that suggests Debussy’s
earlier portrait of the sea in La mer. This is quite
simply a magical passage in Matthews’s hands, and neither
of the treatments of Stokowski or Breiner approach the same
seductive effect. However there is a flip-side to this in the
final six bars of the prelude, where Debussy indicates that
the music should return to the sound of the opening - Dans
la sonorité du début. Matthews needs to wind
down his elaboration of the string figuration, and this process
extends and overlays the final bars in a way that makes recapture
of the initial sonorities unachievable. Breiner manages to return
to the notes of the opening without any the need to add any
additional bars, but then rather misses the point by giving
the repetition of the opening phrases a new and different scoring.
Stokowski alone here manages to recapture the original mood
and sound, blurring his strings and woodwind in a manner that
suggests the use of the sustaining pedal on the piano.
This may seem a very elaborate analysis of what is after all
just one of the 24 tracks on this CD, but the comparison is
illuminating and typical of the whole. Stokowski did not of
course orchestrate all the Préludes, and one’s
reaction to Breiner’s treatment of them here must depend
entirely on the listener’s reaction to Matthews’s
more idiosyncratic though not unidiomatic approach to the music.
He gives us Debussy reflected through the mind of another composer
with ideas of his own; Breiner gives us a version of the Préludes
as they might have been more straightforwardly orchestrated
by one of Debussy’s friends or pupils, but does not achieve
Matthews’s sometimes transcendentally beautiful textures.
It is clear than Jun Märkl enjoys both approaches, but
in his performances of La cathédrale engloutie
it is clear that he draws an even more extreme distinction between
the two. Where in his Lyon box of Debussy he allows the Colin
Matthews orchestration to extend to 7:14, here he shaves over
two minutes off that time, dispatching the Breiner arrangement
in a mere 5:03 - and the difference is not accounted for by
the two or three additional bars that Matthews adds to Debussy’s
original. This is indeed a very brisk and efficient performance
of the piece, and Märkl cannot avoid the sense of unnecessary
hurry (for example at 3:46 into the track). A more usual duration
would be around the 6’30” mark. This is rather an
exception in Märkl’s performances, most of which
are considerably more measured - he takes 4:40 for the final
Feux d’artifice (as he did in his recording of
the Matthews version) as against Gieseking’s 3:23.
Märkl, as I observed in my lengthy review of his complete
Debussy orchestral music recorded in Lyon, is a conductor who
obviously wants to explore every aspect of the composer and
can often achieve enthralling results by taking extremely slow
speeds in the music. He clearly enjoys Breiner’s often
quirky orchestrations, but on a personal level I must say that
I find Colin Matthews’s freer treatment of the scores
pays additional rewards. Treat this disc therefore as a supplement
to Märkl’s Lyon readings of the Matthews orchestrations,
rather than a replacement for it. The orchestral performances
are assured, and the sound is very nicely detailed.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jun Märkl
