Royal Classics Debussys life was both colourful and permissive. His parents failed to provide a secure home, his studies at the Villa Medici in Rome were coloured by his impression of the city as merely "marble, fleas and boredom", and his sexual liaisons were both torrid and varied. His mistress, Gabrielle Dupont, attempted suicide because of Debussy's "artistic temperament", and his first marriage, to Rosalie Texier, ended when he decamped with Emma Bardac, leaving poor Rosalie also suicidal. His marriage to Emma lasted ten years before Debussy succumbed to cancer in 1918, during a German bombardment.
As founder of the Impressionist movement, his delicate music never hints at his stormy private life. Images, composed between 1905 and 1912, proved to be his finest orchestral work. It includes his own impressions, relatively vivid, of the Iberian peninsula in the central section. Prelude a 1'apres-midi d'unfaune dates from 1895. It was inspired by Mallarme's poem and suggests, rather than describes, a placid scene with the help of an unusual wind section comprising three flutes, cor anglais and four horns.
Compared with Debussy's impression of Spain, Rimsky-Korsakov's is infinitely more obvious and robust. Spanish dances, solo violin, Technicolour orchestral writing and furious rhythms characterise a piece which does as much to show off a fine orchestra as it does to convey the spirit of Spain.
Furious rhythms mark Borodin's operatic set piece too, but not before a number of typical Russian folk-song-like melodies have been heard. Even so, the impulsive and propulsive energy of these dances admirably captures the scene in a middle Asian camp when visiting royalty has to be impressed. The musical Kismet has popularised the quieter melodies of these dances but at the end it is the orgiastic pounding rhythms and incredible power of this music that remains in the memory.
Robert Dearling.
Discontinued
Disc No: ROY700952
Price: Sek. 51,00
Name: Debussy / Borodin
Rimsky-Korsakov

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ComposerOpusMusicKey Performer
Borodin , Alexander   Prince Igor - Act 2 Polovtsian dances   Royal Philharmonic Orchestera-Georges Prêtre
Debussy , Claude   Prélude Á l'Aprés-midi d'un Faune   Orchestre de la l'Association des Concerts Colonne-Pierre Dervaux
Debussy , Claude   Images pour Orchestre no. 1 - 3   Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire-André Cluytens
Rimsky-Korsakov , Nicolai   Capriccio Espagnole   Royal Philharmonic Orchestera-Georges Prêtre


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