Paul Dukas: Ariane et Barbe-Bleue auf 2 CDs

Leon Botstein und das BBC Symphony Orchestra widmen sich auf dieser aufwendig gestalteten Doppel-CD-Box zweier französischer Meister - Dukas und Debussy. Dukas’ „Ariane“ gilt als eine der herausragendsten französischen Opern des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, mit Wagnerrischer Kompositionstechnik. Als zweites Werk findet sich Debussy’s „Pellas et Melisande“.

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Leon Botstein, music director of both the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony, recently recorded Paul Dukas’ single opera, Ariane et Barbe-bleue. It will be the only recording of this hauntingly beautiful but rarely performed work in the current catalogue.

Botstein’s extraordinary track record as an advocate for unjustly neglected repertoire has been widely reported. As The New Yorker stated early this year, “Leon Botstein goes where other conductors fear to tread.” Botstein’s New York City Opera debut last year, conducting the first professional staging of Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-bleue in the U. S., was critically acclaimed here and abroad, with Andrew Clark writing in London’s Financial Times: “Nearly a century after its premiere it’s time we wised up to the modernity of Paul Dukas’ only opera [Ariane et Barbe-bleue]. … The three-act score, with its taut, hauntingly suggestive libretto by Maeterlinck, has long been recognised by aficionados as a masterpiece … Leon Botstein paces the work perfectly, with a fine ear for its spacious chiaroscuro.” (concordmusicgroup. com)

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