Debussy: String Quartet & Sonatas

Debussy’s absolute mastery of instrumental colour shines in this album from the Nash Ensemble. It starts with perhaps the French composer’s most famous orchestral work, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, arranged for a dozen musicians. The reduced scoring (by French oboist David Walter) highlights Debussy’s evocative use of woodwind, with atmospheric contributions by harp and chiming crotales. It also appears here as an unexpectedly effective preface to Debussy’s last completed work, the Violin Sonata, whose opening chords seem to offer a quizzical spin on the earlier work’s closing chords. At the very heart of the album is the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, played by the superb trio of Philippa Davis, Lawrence Power and Lucy Wakeford. Again, they reveal the sensitively with which Debussy plays with their instruments’ timbres and innate character, most strikingly the husky viola’s expressiveness and range of colour brought to the fore by Power. After a riveting account of the Cello Sonata follows an outstanding performance of Debussy’s String Quartet—try the fleet and exhilarating second movement with its bouncy and unpredictable rhythms.