Debussy: Orchestral Works

Gramophone Magazine
Editor's Choice - August 2012

“Denève shows how precise were [Debussy's] choices of instrumental colour and how well-defined and animated the images he was expressing through his music...There is nothing vague about these performances; rather they convey both the dynamism and the delicacy of the music with understanding and stimulating freshness.” --Gramophone Magazine, August 2012

“his meticulous attention to detail is impressive, but what should be a complex, living seascape remains stubbornly one-dimensional...Outwardly brilliant, inwardly dull. Perplexing.” --MusicWeb International, August 2012

“his Debussy is his own, muscular yet transparent, colouristic yet atmospheric and mysterious...Even that symphonic warhorse La Mer sounds freshly reimagined by the young Frenchman, whose sense of the music’s ebb and flow, with surging climaxes, is unerring...an ideal way to acquire Debussy’s orchestral masterpieces” --Sunday Times, 3rd June 2012

“Denève still summons a sensuous bloom in the Prélude, and thanks to his influence, the RSNO proves better than the French at their own game: these are among the most seductive Debussy performances I have heard in years.” --Financial Times, 9th June 2012 ****

“Denève has clear ideas about the lucidity of Debussy’s scoring and he conducts the orchestra in a way that brings the poetic or visual pictures that inspired the music vividly and freshly to life...All are performed with finesse and with a combination of energy, discretion and colour that give them a luminous quality.” --The Telegraph, 22nd June 2012 ***