Debussy
String Quartet in G minor; Sonatas
The Nash Ensemble
Hyperion CDA68463 75:07 mins
Clip: Debussy – Sonata for flute, viola and harp, L145 - 2 Interlude Tempo di minuetto (The Nash Ensemble)
Musical awakenings rarely go hand in hand with a 60th anniversary, but The Nash Ensemble has always had something of the extraordinary about it. This recording demonstrates that age truly is just a number, and no barrier to probing, revelatory perspectives.
Players have changed down the decades, but today’s ensemble remains bound by a collective musical memory that brings depth and assurance to each venture. Debussy’s three late sonatas, for violin, flute/viola/harp and cello, invite its distinguished instrumentalists (including cellist Adrian Brendel, flautist Phillipa Davies, violist Lawrence Power and harpist Lucy Wakeford) to step forward in solo roles before slipping back into intimate conversation for other more expansive offerings on this release.
Debussy’s plans for a sequence of six sonatas, the last combining all instruments, were thwarted by war and illness. Pleasingly, the opening Prélude, a radiant, intoxicating arrangement of L’après-midi d’un faune, conjures something of this ambition by assembling string quintet, wind quintet, harp and crotales. Pierre Boulez famously described modern music as being awakened by this piece and, a century later, it retains the shock of the new.
The sound production throughout is impeccable: you can almost visualise the positioning of the players and the notes sailing upwards and hovering in languid circles above them. Musical lines pass in a single, continuous breath from one instrument to the next, and the sensual, dreamlike soundscapes are tinged with immaculately drawn moments of both despair and joy. An alluring and, in time, vintage recording. Suzanne Rolt