Claude Debussy; Arnold Schoenberg - Pelléas & Mélisande (Jonathan Nott)

Information

Composer: Claude Debussy; Arnold Schoenberg

• Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande, Suite symphonique (arr. Jonathan Nott)
• Schoenberg - Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

Jonathan Nott, conductor

Date: 2021

Label: PentaTone

https://www.pentatonemusic.com/product/debussy-schoenberg-pelleas-melisande/

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Review

Here it would be nice to say we have two for the price of one: two versions of Pelléas and Mélisande from the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande – Schoenberg’s tone poem and an orchestral suite from Debussy’s opera. These are available on streaming services, of course, but if you want the physical set then you’ll need to pay for two CDs as this doesn’t seem to be available at the kind of two-for-one price you might expect for around 90 minutes of music.

There have been recordings of orchestral music from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande before, usually in the 1946 version by Erich Leinsdorf, memorably recorded by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1998. They tend to be suites drawn from the orchestral interludes that link scenes in this most enigmatic of operas. But what conductor Jonathan Nott has done here is to go further, creating a 47-minute synthesis that draws on the interludes and the sung scenes involving the Pelleás-Mélisande-Golaud triangle that lies at its heart. It’s a deft bit of work, weaving those familiar, gossamer orchestral threads with vocal lines, which have been appropriated by solo instruments. The most successful of these is Mélisande’s song in the tower when she lets down her hair (‘Mes longs cheveux’), where her line is played most effectively by the cor anglais – a neat mirror to Schoenberg’s tone poem, where the instrument features in the love scene.

Founded by Ernest Ansermet in 1918, the OSR has a great pedigree in Debussy’s opera, notably its 1952 Decca recording (5/52). It’s wonderful to hear the orchestra in such good shape under Nott, the woodwinds – often something of an acquired taste in Ansermet’s day – in particularly fine fettle. The recording is much more closely miked than Abbado’s diaphanous Berlin Phil reading of the Leinsdorf suite so we get a lot more instrumental detail and thicker string textures, including great double bass presence. Nott’s pacing reveals a conductor well acquainted with Debussy’s score from stage performances.

Nott and the OSR also perform the Schoenberg well, a tougher nut to crack. They relish the knotty, dense orchestral writing while maintaining admirable clarity. There’s not quite the sheen of Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Phil strings here, but Nott is alive to the score’s drama and this attractive coupling makes for an intriguing release.

-- Mark Pullinger, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2022/Jan/Debussy-Pelleas-PTC5186782.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2022/Feb/Debussy-Pelleas-PTC5186782.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/orchestral/debussy-schoenberg-pelleas-et-melisande/

https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2021/10/08/jonathan-notts-pelleas-project/

https://www.amazon.com/Debussy-Schoenberg-Orchestre-Romande-Jonathan/dp/B08XL7ZD7C

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Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His innovative harmonies and his use of non-traditional scales were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century and also some modern music groups. Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy

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Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer, leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg

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Jonathan Nott (born 25 December 1962) is an English conductor. The son of a priest at Worcester Cathedral, he studied music in Cambridge, Manchester and London, before leaving Britain to develop his conducting career in Germany via the traditional Kapellmeister system. Nott was music director at the Lucerne Theatre and principal conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (1997-2002), and principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony (2000-16). He has also been music director of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra since 2012, and music and artistic director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande since 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Nott

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