Colin Matthews - The Debussy Preludes (Mark Elder)

Information

Composer: Colin Matthews

• Preludes by Claude Debussy, arranged for orchestra

Hallé Orchestra

Mark Elder, conductor

Date: 2010

Label: Hallé

-----------------------------------------------------------

Review

Now here’s a strange thing: Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of the two books of piano Préludes are already included on the seventh and eighth discs of Naxos’s justly praised nine-CD Debussy box-set from the Orchestre National de Lyon under Jun Märkl, performances that have keen competition from the Hallé on their own label under Sir Mark Elder (it was the Hallé that asked Matthews to undertake the transcriptions in the first place). On this new disc, however, Märkl shifts to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to conduct the Préludes in different orchestral guises by Peter Breiner, a Slovak-born composer and arranger now resident in New York. Much more so than in the Matthews versions, these Breiner ones raise the knotty question of why Debussy’s Préludes need to be orchestrated at all. Their fascination surely lies in the way that Debussy liberated the piano’s expressive and colouristic potential to create images of phenomenal finesse and evocative subtlety.

Matthews harnessed his own creative imagination in rethinking the Préludes in terms of the orchestra, so that they often bear his own personal stamp. His embellishments, his new inflections and his fresh visions add something that is intriguing and ear-catching in itself. Breiner’s are much more straightforward, sometimes dressed in colours that Debussy would have recognised, sometimes not. The impression is of a job professionally done and of performances that do what they have to do and do it well. They do not, however, extinguish the temptation to go back and relish Debussy’s piano originals.

— Geoffrey Norris

-----------------------------------------------------------

Colin Matthews (born 13 February 1946 in London) is an English composer. Educated at the Universities of Nottingham and Sussex, he worked closely with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst, and collaborated on Deryck Cooke's performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. Since the 1970s, his internationally performed works have included orchestral, chamber, choral, ballet, and operatic compositions, commissioned by leading orchestras and festivals. Matthews has also held prominent artistic and administrative roles with organizations including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Britten-Pears Foundation.

***

Mark Elder (born 2 June 1947) is a British conductor. He studied music at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and later became a protégé of Edward Downes in Australia. From 1979 to 1993, Elder was the music director of English National Opera and and gave the ENO several very successful years of productions. He was appointed music director of the Hallé Orchestra in 1999, and is generally regarded as having restored the orchestra to high musical standards. Elder has recorded for the Hyperion, NMC, Chandos, Opera Rara, and Glyndebourne record labels, as well as for the Hallé Orchestra's own label.

-----------------------------------------------------------