On track: Small and perfectly delivered

By WILLIAM DART

It was within the tradition of the French Melodie that Debussy came closest to the poetry often associated with his music. The words and images of Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarme gained a new resonance when graced with his music.

Sandrine Piau is best known for her work in the Baroque and Classical repertoire. A new release on the Naive label has her singing alongside the inimitable Jos van Immerseel in an elegant package of 18 Debussy songs.

Piau is an unmitigated joy. Her French is meticulous - so much so that Dawn Upshaw seems positively slovenly on her 1997 Debussy outing - and those deceptively nebulous lines have just the right buoyancy to them.

The French soprano catches all the drama of these lovely miniatures - especially in the breathless merry-go-round ride of "Chevaux de bois" in which Immerseel's 1897 Erard piano adds just the right ambience.

At the other end of the spectrum, she guides us through the surreal images of "Eventail", the most adventurous of Debussy's last Mallarme settings, as if it were a narrative of impeccable logic.

Debussy has not fared so well across the border in Germany, where Juliane Banse has joined pianist Andras Schiff to mix Mozart and Debussy on their new ECM recording.

Here's a CD that wears its conceptualism on its sleeve with a still from Godard's Histoire du Cinema. And, once you've opened the booklet, ponder and be mystified by Jacque Drillon's mind-tangling essay. The same strained significance, alas, is reflected in the music-making and Banse's heavyish voice works best in the earlier songs, although even here, in numbers like "Pierrot", one longs for some of Piau's playfulness.

Banse's French is not as crisp as it might have been and nor are the songs as sharply characterised; so little so at times that it's easy to be lured away by the bewitching pianism of Schiff.

In the final count, Mozart comes off the victor, as Banse manages to give a real solidity to Das Veilchen as well as exploring the almost Romantic emotionalism of Abendempfindung which is almost taken all the way to Schumannland.

* Sandrine Piau and Jos van Immerseel: Debussy Melodies (Naive V 4932); Juliane Banse and Andras Schiff: Songs of Debussy and Mozart (ECM 1772)