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C'est L'extase - la Mer on CD

Debussy's song cycle Ariettes oubliées of 1888 set six poems from Paul Verlaine's collection Romances sans paroles, beginning with C'est l'extase and Il pleure dans mon cœur - penetratingly poetic images of love's ecstasy and rainlike tears of despair. The six Ariettes are the departure point for the arrangement realized in 2012 by British composer Robin Holloway in response to a request from the San Francisco Symphony. Holloway has altered their order while adding a further four Debussy songs, binding the whole work together with brief orchestral links and a feverish epilogue, 'con moto agitato'. This world first recording is given by French soprano Vannina Santoni, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under the baton of Mikko Franck. The Finnish conductor, a great admirer of Debussy, here also presents the master's bewitching masterpiece La mer, first heard in Paris in 1905.