The LSO’s January 2016 performances of Debussy’s opera at the Barbican in London, conducted by Simon Rattle and semi-staged by Peter Sellars, have been beautifully transferred to CD, and the result is a credit to the LSO’s own record label. It’s not a definitive performance – Christian Gerhaher’s Pelléas is too pointed, Magdalena Kozena’s Mélisande too worldly sounding to offer quite the last word on these endlessly elusive characters – but it is an exceptionally vivid one, not least thanks to the expressiveness of those two singers and, one assumes, the experience of working on the characters with the meticulous Sellars.
Gerald Finley’s composed yet menacing Golaud is superb, and to have Bernarda Fink and Franz-Josef Selig as Geneviève and Arkel is real luxury casting. Under Rattle’s leadership the orchestra is a true protagonist in the drama; the colours of this great score are constantly evolving, intensifying and receding, and the interludes are wonderfully well played.
