A rarity is the Symphony in B minor, Debussy’s only attempt at this form standardized by Haydn and Mozart and brought to full blossom by Beethoven and others. He wrote this symphony as a teenager, but only completed a single movement, arranged for piano duet. Apparently he lost interest, and later disavowed the whole symphonic form. The orchestration here is by the American composer Tony Finno.

The Performance If trying to rethink Debussy’s sublimely idiomatic piano writing in orchestral terms isn’t challenging enough, to make it sound like an orchestral original borders on the impossible. Yet miraculously, this is just what Jun Märkl achieves in this enchanting collection, as witness magical performances of the Suite bergamasque and Petite Suite that appear to float free of musical gravity. He makes En blanc et noir sound even more alluring than in its own two-piano original, while an early symphonic movement that originally never got beyond piano duet scoring emerges like liquid gold.

The Verdict Jun Märkl’s outstanding Debussy series makes every piece sound like one of the most cherishable masterworks in the repertoire.

Want more? All five previous volumes [Naxos 8.570759, 8.570993, 8.572296, 8.572297, 8.572568] in this Naxos Debussy series are must-haves.

Why you’ll love this

• SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL. No one has ever captured the sense of a small boat creating gentle ripples on a lake in the early morning mist (‘En bateau’ from the Petite Suite) as magically as Märkl and his gifted Lyon players.
• REVITALISED SYMPHONY. American composer-arranger Tony Finno’s inspired orchestration of Debussy’s early Symphony comes thrillingly to life in exemplary sound from gifted engineer-producer Tim Handley.
• IN COLOUR! If you have ever wondered what Debussy’s En blanc et noir (a reference to the piano keyboard) might sound like fleshed out in full colour, conducting wizard Jun Märkl provides the perfect answer.

Debussy was fortunate in having friends around him who were so thoroughly steeped in his style as to be able to replicate it. Strictly speaking, these two instalments in the Orchestre National de Lyon’s excellent series are not of “Debussy Orchestral Works” but of works orchestrated by others. One exception is La boîte à joujoux, the enchanting children’s ballet that Debussy composed in 1913 but which was not staged until 1921, after his death. He himself wrote the short score and made a start on the orchestration but it was completed by his friend André Caplet. Caplet’s knowledge of Debussy’s world of sound was so profound that it’s impossible to detect any joins, as it were, and it is a pure joy that such magical, affectionate and playful music was given life by such a sympathetic hand. It is performed with the sensitivity, warmth of character, fluency and discerning treatment of instrumental timbre that have been the hallmarks of the Lyon orchestra’s playing and Jun Märkl’s conducting on all four of their previous Debussy discs.

Caplet’s assimilation of Debussy’s colour palette is equally evident in his orchestration of “Pagodes” from the set of piano pieces Estampes, Debussy’s contemporary Paul-Henri Büsser contributing an arrangement of “Soirée dans Grenade” from the same set that nicely conveys its Spanish sultriness. The Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari, with Debussy’s approval, recast L’isle joyeuse in scintillating orchestral guise, and Ernest Ansermet brought a particularly haunting atmosphere to the Six Epigraphes antiques.

Some of the orchestral versions in Vol 6 are probably just as well known as their keyboard originals, particularly Büsser’s of the Petite Suite, done with the utmost finesse. He also resurrected, under Debussy’s watchful eye, the orchestral score of Printemps, consumed by a fire at the binder’s. Robin Holloway’s 2002 version of En blanc et noir breathes Debussian air, as does Tony Finno’s realisation of the early Symphony, although the work itself suggests that symphonic writing was not perhaps Debussy’s natural métier.