Chamber works from the beginning and end of Debussy’s career – his only string quartet, composed in 1893, and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp, from 1915 – provide the points of reference in this collection from the Quatuor Voce, with the soprano Jodie Devos, flautist Juliette Hurel and harpist Emmanuel Ceysson. Juxtaposed as they are here, those two scores underline just how far Debussy travelled stylistically in less than a quarter of a century.
Though the composition of his quartet coincided with work on the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune, the score that first announced him as a modernist, it is a far more conservative, almost backward-looking piece. Alongside the late sonata’s wistful musical shapes, its ever-changing play of sonorities and almost wilful changes of mood and direction, all shaped beautifully and elegantly in this performance, the quartet’s reliance on traditional forms and the use of the cyclical thematic methods of César Franck seem to place it in a very different expressive world altogether, despite the tremendous urgency and authority that the Voce’s performance gives it.
