Search - Debussy, Saraste, Finnish Radio Symphony Orch :: La Mer Prelude

This two-disc set offers well-played, well-recorded performances of Debussy both familiar and unfamiliar. Perhaps the most interesting and rarely heard item is the composer's Egyptian ballet Khamma, which is musically splendid but virtually unknown due to the fact that the composer entrusted the orchestration to Charles Koechlin. For a composer so sensitive to every nuance of instrumental sound, Debussy was curiously indifferent to the business of orchestration, and indeed many of his pieces, both major and minor (the saxophone rhapsody, La Boite a Joujou, and Printemps among them), were actually scored by students and colleagues under the composer's supervision. In these days of "authenticity" at all costs, this naturally raises suspicion as to the quality of the music in question, but you at least can pick up this attractively priced collection and decide for yourself. --David Hurwitz