Solid Reissues From Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez no longer devotes much of his time to big-orchestra conducting the way he did during the 1960s and ‘70s. However, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will again enjoy his presence during the final weeks of the present season.

Happily, the CBS recordings he made 20 or so years ago, which led many listeners to make the epochal discovery that music’s passions could be heightened by minimal “interpretation” and optimal clarity, are being reissued in superbly remastered new editions by Sony and at mid-price.

Heading the reissues is the long-awaited first CD of the 1970 recording of Debussy’s ‘Pelleas et Melisande” (47265, 3 CDs).

Clarity, mobility, incisiveness are hardly qualities our elders considered paramount--or even desirable--in performing such “mistily elusive” music. Yet it’s precisely these qualities that account for much of the perception-changing success of Boulez’s Debussy. In showing us how the score is put together he succeeds, against expectations, in exposing its passions. Boulez patently believes that music has to be heard and experienced in all its parts, not as an intoxicating, amorphous haze.

“Pelleas et Melisande” remains a dreamscape in the conductor’s hands, but one on which clear and striking images are superimposed.

Boulez here drew playing of superb pointedness from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which could never be mistaken for a Gallic orchestra.

His singers too were cast against French type: clear-voiced, somewhat neutral in style, the title roles entrusted to an American, George Shirley, and a Swede, Elisabeth Soderstrom, intelligent artists concerned with telling what remains a universal and timeless story of youthful passion thwarted by uncomprehending age and jealousy.

This titular pair’s directness of expression extends as well to the other principals: the late David Ward, who delivers the monologues of the aged Arkel with touching grace, as distinct from the woolly mouthings of the French basses usually identified with the part, and Yvonne Minton, cool and gravely affecting as Genevieve, Pelleas’ mother.

Golaud, the opera’s most complex yet recognizable figure, could use more vocal color and suavity than Donald McIntyre’s gruff baritone provides. But McIntyre is ultimately convincing as the broken object of our sympathy.

The Boulez “Pelleas” arrives at the same time as the reissue of the opera (Erato 45684, 3 mid-priced CDs), first released but only briefly circulated in 1981. The Monte-Carlo Opera Orchestra, under Armin Jordan’s relaxed direction, is competent but doesn’t exhibit the commitment of Boulez’s British troops, and the title roles are in capable hands.

We may miss in Eric Tappy’s Pelleas (as we do in Shirley’s) some of the sweet nasality of the typical French high baritone (or low tenor), but he is an ardent, accurate singer, successfully partnered by Rachelle Yakar, darker-voiced and sexier than her Sony counterpart.

There is little, however, to be said in favor of the Golaud of Philippe Huttenlocher, whose unsteady baritone is unable to convey the character’s menacing authority. Nor is Erato’s rather distant orchestral reproduction (the voices are fine) a match for Sony’s sharply focused sonics.

Returning as well in Sony’s Boulez series is an indispensable Bartok program with the New York Philharmonic consisting of the “Miraculous Mandarin” ballet, in its delectably horrific entirety, the rowdy, rarely encountered “Three Village Scenes” (with the Camerata Singers) and the early, faintly Straussian (Richard, that is) Opus 12 Orchestral Pieces, about as close as the composer ever got to writing a symphony (Sony 45837).

You’d be missing out too by not acquiring a reissue from the early ‘80s, a collection of Stravinsky’s songs with instrumental ensemble accompaniment--folksy, witty, darkly dramatic, severe--covering virtually every phase of his career.

It comes as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s mid-priced “2Oth Century Classics” line (431 751) and has Boulez leading his Ensemble InterContemporain with a quartet of stylish vocalists: Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Ann Murray, Robert Tear and John Shirley-Quirk.