Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (Original Piano Version) - Le Corre, Jourdan (1999)

Claude Debussy

Pelléas et Mélisande

(Original Piano Version 1893-1895)

Dominique Ploteau, Cecile Besnard,

Philippe Le Chevalier, Bertrand Bontoux,

Elodie Mechain, Gabriel Ortega

Pascal Le Corre piano - Pierre Jourdan Musical Director

Theatre Français de la Musique - TFM 3

A rare project and a most beautiful discovery for lovers of the masterpiece that started a new age in modern musical drama. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is probably the most important contribution to the history of musical theatre for the seemingly contradictory reason that it did not stem from anything that had been (though we cannot deny Wagner’s seminal influence), nor it did inspire a new style after its controversial creation (apart from some lesser operatic efforts of the time like Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini or Dukas’ Arianne et Barbe-bleue, and some structural and harmonic influence on later masterpieces the likes of Berg’s Wozzeck and Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle).

Pelléas et Mélisande stands as a one off pinnacle of both theatrical and musical arts.

The extraordinary importance of this release from 1999 lies in the intimate, kammerspiel-like presentation of the solo piano original version. Debussy’s orchestral score is of course magnificent, providing superbly suitable colouring to the characters and the drama, yet – especially due to the composer’s amazing piano technique, from its honeyed modal and liquid chordal structures to the sudden dynamic contrasts between light and shade – by listening to this edition, we are drawn to the core of Debussy’s true art, and are able to better understand the many nuances of this immense music-drama treasure.

(the following commentary has been translated from the original French booklet)

“In the entire musical and lyric repertoire, Pelléas et Mélisande is the only work that resonates in me as an expression of a second nature, like Racine's Phèdre for tragedies or Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for literature. For more than forty years, I have been studying Debussy’s score and have seen all the most important productions worldwide. The way Debussy set Maeterlinck's drama to music is a geniale interpretation of theatre, drama and poetry. Let’s not forget that the text of the work is not a libretto but the exact text (except for a few cuts) of the pièce created in Paris in 1893 at the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens.

After his unfinished operatic attempt Rodrigue et Chimène (1892), Debussy was definite in his choice on Maeterlinck’s symbolist masterpiece, which allowed him to introduce the purest expression of his music in the silences, in the play of shadows and light, and in the otherworldy dramatic texture.

In Pelléas et Mélisande, the music tells the real story, the text being nothing but the surface. These considerations led me to make the choice to present this work not in its later orchestral version (completed seven years after its composition between 1893 and 1895), but in its first version for piano solo. Intimate lyrical drama and not opera, a drama set in a timeless and abstract universe, made of either direct or reflected light... in a word: in a Theatre of the Imagination.

For this project it was essential to assemble a group of actors-singers for which French language was a second nature. I therefore resorted to young artists who, for the most part, had not previously studied their parts. In an almost initiatory approach, two years of relentless work on the text, on its poetry and its symbols were necessary, until we felt we were breathing the great musical expression of Debussy, an art which has more to do with melopoeia and inner melody than with opera”.

(Pierre Jourdan about his production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" for the Theatre Français de la Musique, Theatre Impérial de Compiègne)

The 3CD box was bought in March 2012 at Gibert Joseph of Blvd. Saint-Michel, Paris.

Flac Image, Covers & Booklet