Page 448 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune L86 (1894); Jeux, L133 (1912)
Dukas La Péri (1911)
Roussel Bacchus et Ariane Op.43 – Suite no.2 (1931)

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Domingo Hindoyan

Onyx Classics ONYX4224 [68’07″’]

Producer Andrew Cornall Engineers Philip Siney, Christopher Tann
Recorded 20-21 January, 24, 25 & 27 February 2022 at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?
Domingo Hindoyan’s first release as Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra is a sequence of French ballet music which stretches across
almost three decades, taking in that broad stylistic succession from Impressionism to Neo-
Classicism as its remit.

What’s the music like?
Belatedly acknowledged as one of the defining masterpieces from the 20th
century, Debussy’s Jeux is more familiar in the concert hall, where its myriad of formal
subtleties and expressive nuances can more fully be savoured. Without ever feeling rushed,
Hindoyan’s take is an alert and impulsive one – lacking just a last degree of mystery in its
opening and closing pages, but with its larger sections maintaining a flexible momentum
and those calmer interludes exuding a tangible expectancy. A reading, then, which would
rank high on any shortlist of recordings.

Almost two decades on, Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane ballet inhabits a very different
aesthetic. Effectively its second act, the Second Suite is not lacking for any sensual appeal –
witness the interplay of violin and viola in its ‘Introduction’ (eloquently rendered
by Thelma Handy and Nicholas Bootiman), or mounting fervour of The Kiss then
ingratiating poise in Dance of Ariadne and Bacchus. Hindoyan has their measure, duly taking
the final Bacchanale at an impetuous if never headlong tempo that builds to an apotheosis
of finely controlled abandon.

Although it achieved notoriety via Nijinsky’s choreography (and dancing) in 1912,
Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was fully established as a game-changer in
Western music – its opening flute melody (languidly played by Cormac Henry) setting in
motion a sequence of episodes whose content is only marginally less remarkable than those
seamless transitions between them. Ensuring an unbroken continuity, Hindoyan summons
a response of unforced rightness in music whose essence is only made explicit as the last
notes resonate into silence.

Finally, to Dukas and La Péri which proved his final work of any real consequence. After its
brass delivers a lusty rendering of the Fanfare, the orchestra makes the most of this ‘poème
dansé’ – whether in its crepuscular initial stages, the sweeping melody that duly comes to
the fore then that orgiastic passage which sets in motion a gradual if unfaltering approach
toward the main climax. Suitably uninhibited here, Hindoyan rightly places greatest
emphasis on the ensuing postlude – its mingled radiance and regret surely as affecting as
any music of this era.