You might call this a second-rate disc of second-rate Debussy. The performances are acceptable to good, the music uniformly pretty. Khamma works best as a complete work, with its exotic coloring and effective scheme of contrasts, though this performance is a mite droopy compared to Martinon’s benchmark interpretation on EMI. The symphonic fragments from The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian are lovely as individual pieces, and they’re well played here, but the four movements don’t make a terribly eventful 20 minutes of listening. Jun Märkl includes three other bits (most notably the prelude to Act 2) that are nice to have but add little to the overall impression. The extracts from King Lear and The Prodigal Son are slight indeed, but again, they may fill a gap in your collection if you’re a Debussy completist–and that is this disc’s main attraction.
