Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Debussy

Debussy
Jeux, Khamma, La Boîte à Joujoux 
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui

BIS BIS2162

For those who lament the paucity of orchestral works by Debussy, three late works he conceived as ballets in the 1910s make for an attractive disc, hinting at the sophisticated and complex directions the composer might have gone in had not cancer snatched him from us.

Khamma has a portentous plot in which a woman’s three supplicatory dances save an Egyptian city from invasion. Orchestrated by Charles Koechlin under Debussy’s supervision it’s fascinating and still unpublished! Jeux is a more upbeat score written for Diaghilev and Nijinsky, though Debussy found the romantic plot...