Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) / Henri Büsser (1872 - 1973) - Petite Suite, L. 65 (1886 - 1889, orch. 1907) I. En bateau [0:00] II. Cortège [3:48] III. Menuet [6:58] IV. Ballet [9:51] Orchestra National de Lyon, Jun Märkl (2010) Claude Debussy's Petite Suite is a set of four pieces for piano four-hands. The set was orchestrated, with Debussy's approval, by Henri Büsser. A typical performance lasts around 12 minutes. "The Petite Suite of 1889 is probably the least characteristic work by Debussy to have found a place in the enduring repertory. Another year would pass before his personal sound became consistently imprinted—in, for example, the Deux Arabesques and Suite bergamasque for piano (both ca. 1890) on the route to such masterpieces of the ensuing decade as the Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune (1891-94), Nocturnes (1897-99), and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1893-1902). We do, however, get a momentary glance toward the later Debussy in the opening movement of Petite Suite, En Bateau (In a Boat), where passing ripples of sixteenth notes trace the suggestion of a whole-tone scale. But in general these four movements seem more of a tribute to, or an impersonation of, other French masters of the time. The overall impression of En Bateau derives from its long-spanning melody that glides above rolled chords—a sound that evokes Gabriel Fauré more than it does the later Debussy. The title En Bateau must refer to the poem of that name that had appeared in 1869 in the collection Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, Debussy’s favorite poet—an erotic text whose scene is set on a skiff that floats across dreamy, moonlit water. 'Cortège,' another poem from that Verlaine collection, pictures a genteel lady preceded by her pet monkey, the train of her dress carried by a helper. Debussy’s instrumental reaction is at once energized and insouciant, its melody perhaps suggesting the monkey and attendant, its little eruptions depicting the comic aspect of this ceremony. Whose music does this resemble? Surely it is the Georges Bizet of L’Arlésienne. The third and fourth movements have no specific connection to Verlaine, although the Menuet inhabits the same enchanted Watteau-and-Fragonard landscape that informs much of Fêtes galantes. Here we sense the Classical elegance of Jules Massenet, who had summoned up eighteenth-century manners so effectively in his then-recent operatic hit Manon (1884). For his finale, Ballet, Debussy seems to pay obeisance to Léo Delibes, a distinguished ballet composer whose gravity-defying scores are filled with grace, and to Emmanuel Chabrier, the master of optimistic clarity. Debussy’s Petite Suite was published in its original four-hands version in 1889, and transcriptions for solo piano and for viol ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxcxAYjDmsk

Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941) - The Sea, H. 100 (1910 - 1911) I. Seascape. Allegro ben moderato [0:00] II. Sea-foam. Allegro vivo [7:15] III. Moonlight. Adagio ma non troppo [9:42] IV. Storm. Allegro energico - Allegro moderato e largamente [15:34] BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox (2001) Frank Bridge's The Sea, H. 100 is an orchestral suite in four movements. Typical performances last around 22 minutes. "Not only was this aural seascape one of Frank Bridge's most successful works, but it was the piece that 'knocked sideways' the 10-year-old Benjamin Britten, who would go on to study with Bridge and champion his music. The Sea, however, is a plush late Romantic score not really characteristic of Bridge's fully mature, more austere music. To a degree, it can be confused with such Arnold Bax oceanic tone poems as Garden of Fand, Tintagel, and On the Sea-Shore. Of the first movement, Bridge wrote, 'Seascape paints the sea on a summer morning. From high drifts is seen a great expanse of waters lying in the sunlight. Warm breezes play over the surface.' Fragments of a harmonically vague theme float through the orchestra, then come together into a broad melody that surges to an early climax. The music repeatedly swells and recedes through the course of this movement, relying on colorful woodwind solos in the quiet sections and full string and brass proclamations for the grander statements. 'Sea-foam,' wrote Bridge, 'froths among the low-lying rocks and pools on the shore, playfully not stormy.' This is a brief, mercurial scherzo, with quicksilver little woodwind solos weaving their repeated notes through fuller orchestral material, most notably a broad horn passage. Third comes the slow movement, 'Moonlight,' which Bridge described as 'a calm sea at night. The first moonbeams are struggling to pierce through dark clouds, which eventually pass over, leaving the sea shimmering in full moonlight.' This nocturne begins as a huge orchestral sigh, a tender, quiet, harp-accompanied inhalation followed by a long, firm, crescendoing exhalation of related material, a troubling little cough in the brass, and then a more extended section in which the material breathes more steadily and quietly. 'Storm,' the finale, is almost self-explanatory. Wrote Bridge, 'Wind, rain and tempestuous seas, with the lulling of the storm an [allusion] to the first number is heard and which may be regarded as the sea-lover's dedication to the sea.' Despite much conventional churning in the strings and woodwinds, complete with cymbal crashes, chorale-like brass passages also ride over some of the effects. Again, the music ebbs and flows, and once the storm's last flurries seem to have receded into the low woodwinds, Bridge brings back the big, sweeping theme from the fi ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoBcgHtnHrc