Three Preludes

arranged by Colin Matthews (born 1946)

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest

Feuilles mortes

Feux d’artifice

Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of Debussy’s 24 Preludes are among not ony the most accomplished scores of their kind but also the most imaginative. They are not straight transcriptions. In theory it would be quite possible to write note-for-note orchestral arrangements of the piano originals, but that would not make authentic orchestral music. “It has been fascinating,” Matthews has said, “to find ways of transcribing textures which are at first sight wholly pianistic into orchestral music which, I hope, would be just as difficult to translate back to the piano.” Of the three Preludes to be performed on this occasion - the first he wrote in a long-term project following a commission from Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra in 2001 - Feuilles mortes might just be restored to the piano from Matthews’s score. Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest and Feux d’artifice certainly could not.

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest (What the West Wind Saw) - from Debussy’s first book of piano Preludes, published in 1910 - was inspired by an account of the adventures of the West Wind, the “wild boy” who “smacks of the sea,” in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Garden of Paradise. It is a virtuoso piano piece featuring such essentially keyboard devices as whirling arpeggios, tremolandos, trills, toccata figuration, rumbling dissonances… most of which would make no sense transferred literally to the orchestra. So, while the harmonies of the first five bars of the orchestral version (before the entry of a the chorale theme on trombones and tuba) are implied by Debussy’s introductory arpeggios, the material is actually Matthews’s own. Another creative intervention is a series of horn calls in the central climax of the piece.

Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves) - from the second book of Preludes, published in 1913 - evidently presented fewer problems, since there is nothing in this beautifully scored little piece that is not in the original. The title is thought to derive from a poem by the composer’s friend Gabriel Mourey, beginning “Under the melancholy and chilly autumn wind.” Certainly, like the poet’s, Debussy’s dead leaves symbolise a greater loss than the decay of autumn.

Matthews’s version of Feux d’artifice (Fireworks), a piano piece as spectacular as any 14th July celebration, confirms that in situations like this fidelity is not always best served by literal translaton. Apart from adding his own material - in the opening bars, for example, only the celesta ostinato and detached xylophone octaves derive directly from the piano score - he not only executes the occasional excision but also makes a tiny implant. The brief piano cadenza is necessarily rewritten. The overall effect, however, from the flickering beginning to the explosive climax and the distant echo of the Marseillaise, is as Debussy conceived it.

Gerald Larner ©2006

Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq., P.P.M.P.C

La Danse de Puck

Minstrels

One of the pleasures associated with Colin Matthews’s long-term Debussy project - by the end of which the Halle will have orchestral versions of all twenty-four of the piano Preludes in its repertoire - is speculation. While there is nothing in this group as tricky for the orchestrator as the keyboard study Les tierces alternées in the previous instalment, there are problems of interpretation in all three of them. What will he make of those allusions which, though elusive in the piano original, could acquire a degree of definition when translated into orchestral terms?

Claudio Arrau apparently insisted on reading the whole of The Pickwick Papers before tackling the ninth Prelude in Book II, Hommage à S.Pickwick, Esq., P.P.M.P.C. It’s that kind of piece. Something is going on but, however well you know your Dickens, it is not clear what. By flattering Pickwick with his self-awarded letters after his name (they should actually read “G.C.M.P.C.” for “General Chairman-Member Pickwick Club”) Debussy obviously acknowledge the pompousness of the object of his homage. He confirms it too when he establishes Pickwick’s nationality in heavy-handed octaves the opening bars. After that, in spite of the firmness of the piano articulation in this particular piece, we are on our own. Some commentators claim to identify the sound of a coach horn and associate the running dotted rhythms with the carriage in which Pickwick and his companions go off on their adventures.

But there are running dotted rhythms in La Danse de Puck (Prelude No.10 in Book I) and Puck did not girdle the earth in a coach. There are horn calls too, the first of them immediately after the opening pirouette, the next in the middle of the piece where it is added onto a broad melody in triadic harmonies. Could this be Oberon, even though he is associated with the horn not so much in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as in Weber’s Oberon opera? Certainly, it offers an opportunity for darker colouring in the middle of the range to contrast with Puck’s dotted-rhythm dance at the brighter end of the spectrum.

It is clear from the piano articulation and figuration of Minstrels (No.12 in Book I) that the black-face street musicians Debussy encountered in Eastbourne in 1905 included a banjo player and a drummer (at one point, indeed, the score is marked quasi tambour). But the whole charm of the piece is that we are hearing piano evocations rather than the instruments themselves. So should these sounds be realised fairly literally in an orchestral version - on plucked strings, say, and a side drum - or suggested by less direct means? Colin Matthews, who will no doubt have enjoyed orchestrating not only the comedy episodes but also the sentimental music-hall tune towards the end, will surely have the answer.