Debussy: Jeux - Poème dansé

“The Prélude à l'Après-Midi opens with a beautifully shaped flute solo, but then becomes too generalised, without enough stabs of drama to lift its general mood of indolence, while La Mer motors along rather complacently and Jeux totally lacks the quicksilver wit and colouristic imagination that makes it one of the most elusive and potent of Debussy's late works. Whether it's more obvious delight in the luxuriance of the textures, or a sharper analytical insight into the way in which the pieces are constructed, it needs more character; what we get instead is elegant, undemanding background music.” The Guardian, 30th May 2008 **

“Debussy ushered in the modern age with breezy whole-tone scales and mere impressions of keys, which the musicians under Märkl paint with delicious colour. Märkl moves the phrases of La Mer like plump, urgent waves, or smoothes them like the deceptive calm ready to surge at any moment. A sense of lurking danger might have been more apparent, however. The Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune paints beautifully the dancing sunlight but lacks that haunting hollowness in the flute that evokes the pagan past. Jeux is both playful and as tense as a tennis racket. But Children's Corner is a little overpowering for the nursery, the jauntiness now rather grotesque in expanded form.” The Times, 24th May 2008 ***