Casual buyers and browsers should note that the vocal works on this album, accompanied by orchestra, are not the original works of
Debussy
. They were made in 2012 by composer
Robin Holloway
at the request of the
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
. They were performed at that time by
Renee Fleming
but have not been recorded until now. The settings are unorthodox and never boring, and they will probably strike different listeners in different ways.
Holloway
reorders the songs, believing that they were not intended as a sequenced set (probably debatable), inserts some of the composer's
Verlaine
settings in the new ordering, adds transitions between most of them, and tacks on a high-powered epilogue of his own. The end result, perhaps, is
for the 21st century, amped up and intense, with hidden psychological themes and ideas wrung out and brought to the fore by the orchestration. There will be little disagreement, however, about two of the main attractions: soprano
Vannina Santoni
is a talented newcomer from whom one wants to hear more, and
Mikko Franck
, heard at the end in
La Mer
, is an excellent
conductor; his rendition of this well-trodden work is full of detail and entirely absorbing.
Santoni
has a big voice that stands up to these orchestrations, and
Alpha
's sound from the Radio France auditorium keeps everything in balance. Nothing if not an intriguing
release. ~ James Manheim