Debussy: La Chute de la Maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) / Caplet: Conte Fantastique (Fantastic Tale) / Schmitt: Etude pour 'Le Palais Hante' (Study for 'The Haunted Palace') op. 49

Edgar Allan Poe was (and may still be) more highly regarded in France than in the USA. His influence on French Romantics may be summed up by Baudelaire's stating that he made his morning prayers to God and to Poe. Poe for his part adopted some Gallic poses: an early nom de plume was Henri Le Rennet; his tales that started the genre of detective fiction featured the Parisian character C. Auguste Dupin. France was for Poe another work of the imagination: he may have briefly gone across the English Channel as a child when his adopted family was living in England, but he didn't travel there as an adult.This compact disc shows Poe's grip on nineteenth-century French artistic thought. The main attraction is Debussy's "lyrical drama" based on The Fall of the House of Usher. Debussy worked on a two-part opera using The Fall of the House of Usher and The Devil and the Belfry as his sources. Debussy's grand scheme was not realized, but this fragment was reconstituted in the mid-1970s by Juan Allende-Blin. The result is appropriately gloomy and portentous. The music is often striking in its harmonies, even if a certain sense of the half-baked pervades the mood.A more fully realized score is Andre Caplet's work for harp and string orchestra based on The Masque of the Red Death. Caplet was an associate of Debussy's: he scored some of Debussy's works, including Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque. Debussy's gossamer touch is evident here. This is a melancholically evocative work that effectively conveys the eerie world that Poe evoked in words.The last, shortest work is an étude by the now-obscure Florent Schmitt, based on The Haunted Palace. The sense of Something lurking in shadowy corners is summoned up in very accomplished impressionistic style.George Prêtre sensitively conducts these minor, but intriguing pieces. This music is well worth the attention of listeners who are sated with the standard classical repertoire.A note about Florent Schmitt: he was a very popular composer in the early twentieth century -- in 1912 Stravinsky stated in a letter to Schmitt that Schmitt's Salomé score was "one of the greatest masterpieces of modern music." Schmitt's anti-Semitic sentiments led him to express support for the Nazis and then too eagerly embrace the Vichy regime. The passage of time has allowed his odious political tendencies to recede and his music to be performed and enjoyed: Florent Schmitt: Psaume XLVII: La tragédie de Salomé; Suite sans esprit de suite Schmitt: Psaume XLVII / Roussel Psaume LXXX

Debussy tried over many years to complete an opera based on Edgar Allen Poe's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Passing well beyond traditional tonality in many sequences, many passages are reminiscent of Schoenberg's ERWARTUNG and DIE GLUCKLICHE HAND and of somewhat more conservative works by Schrecker and Zemlinsky. It was left in fragmentary state at his death. Things were complicated by the fact that the composer's second wife gave away many pages of the manuscript as souvenirs to Debussy's friends ! There have been three attempts to make a performance version of the work, one by Carolyn Abbate, one by Juan Allende-Blin (source of the current recording) and one by Robert Orledge. Abbate and orchestrator Robert Kyr only set the completed opening scene of the work. Allende-Blin attempted to put the remaining fragments in performable order, while Orledge lucked out, as several more pages of vocal score had been discovered by the time he set to work on it. He also indulges in some sensitive guess work about the bits that are still missing. His version, lasting some 45 minutes is available on a Capriccio DVD and proves pretty convincing as a stage work.The Allende-Blin version, lasting around 23 minutes doesn't add up to very much. It makes for effective listening on a moment by moment basis, but as it is missing the core dramatic scenes, it doesn't have any cumulative impact.The singing by Christine Barbaux (she gets almost nothing to do-it is amazing that none of the three editors of the work thought to use Lady Madeleine's verse from Poe's 'The Haunted Palace' as a binding element. As it is strophic and the first strophe is complete, the full text of the poem could have been used and that melody could have given the ghostly heroine more to do .), Francois Le Roux, Pierre-Yves Le Maigat and Jean Philippe Lafont is first rate, and Georges Pretre's conducting is beautifully paced.The two instrumental filler works, Caplet's LA MASQUE DE LA MORTE ROUGE and Schmitt's ETUDE POUR 'LE PALAIS HANTE' are effective examples of 'Impressionist' style (they seem quite conservative compared to some of the wilder passages in the Debussy), and deserve to be better known.The sound recording is up to EMI's high standards.

Very pleased.