A few days ago I received a call from my colleague Christophe Huss. “Have you heard the new La Mer from Jun Märkl and Lyon? Atrocious!” To be honest, and much as I trust his normally impeccable judgment, I had doubts. After all, La Mer is a French icon, this is a French orchestra, Christophe is French, and Märkl is German. We all know how the English think they know English music, Americans know American music, Germans know German music, etc., etc. And Christophe isn’t just French–he’s so French he had to move to Canada to get away from France. He’s a lot tougher than I am when it comes to these things. So I put on this new disc trying to keep on open mind. Guess what? He was dead right! I should have taken his word for it from the start.
The Afternoon of a Faun has to be the worst performance to appear in many, many years. Märkl indulges a penchant for flabby, rhythmless rubato at dragging tempos that sucks the life right out of the piece. Balances both here and elsewhere favor woodwinds who can ill-afford the scrutiny. La Mer truly is “atrocious”: monotonous, dynamically constricted, and featuring mediocre contributions from the strings and brass. In particular, “Play of the Waves” is so disjointed and unbalanced that it sounds more like an amateur orchestra’s first reading than a professional, finished interpretation. Listen to the glockenspiel concerto that Märkl makes of its opening, and Märkl’s subsequent inability to decide where the melody is and focus on what matters in Debussy’s shifting textures. It’s really a mess.
Jeux simply plods, and anyone who knows the piano original of Children’s Corner (or has actually played it) will readily notice that Märkl has the balance between melody and accompaniment reversed in Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum; that the Serenade of the Doll lumbers along more like the preceding Jimbo; and that this Golliwog’s Cakewalk kicks with concrete boots. You can’t listen to this disc without feeling that Jun Märkl hasn’t the slightest clue how to conduct this music. To call this a disappointment would be a major understatement. I shudder to think that it’s only Volume 1.
