Delangle

This second instalment of our long-term project Poétiques de l’Instant (Poetry of the Moment) combines two masterly string quartets with a range of other instrumental colours, unpublished transcriptions and first performances. Alongside the famous Quartet by Ravel, the Voce Quartet have commissioned a new quartet from Bruno Mantovani – his fifth - which develops around a crucial note in Ravel’s Quartet. They have also drawn on the multiple talents of harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, who enhances the programme with a magical chamber transcription of Ravel’s famous Mother Goose suite. For this arrangement, as well as for Ravel’s equally superb Introduction and Allegro for septet, the Quatuor Voce are joined by three outstanding artists: flautist Juliette Hurel, clarinettist Rémi Delangle and harpist Emmanuel Ceysson.

The works on this recording were written at various periods in Claude Debussy’s life, and reflect different aspects of him: from a young man stylistically unsure of himself to the confident maître, from a jobbing composer struggling to fulfill sometimes incongruous commissions to a man worn down by illness and outer events. The disc opens with Printemps – a work originally for choir, piano and orchestra written in 1887 during Debussy’s stay in Italy as a winner of the Prix de Rome, but only published 25 years later in an orchestration made by Henri Büsser under the composer’s supervision. Three of the works that follow were commissions – the Rapsodie from a lady saxophonist, the Marche écossaise from an American general of Scottish descent and the Deux Dances from the instrument-maker Pleyel wanting to market a new model for a chromatic harp.