Acclaimed sopranos Lorna Anderson and Lisa Milne, two of Britain's leading exponents of French song, join pianist Malcolm Martineau for the second volume of Hyperion's overview of Debussy's haunting, mercurial songs. The French composer's output in this genre spanned his whole life, from adolescent attempts to set Paul Verlaine's Fêtes galantes to the Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé, written five years before his death. All inhabit a universe of shifting colors and impressions, from the sensual Chansons de Bilitis to the Proses lyriques, which foreshadow the dreamlike atmosphere of Pelléas et Mélisande.
