This is the fifth and last installment of the complete Debussy Piano Works with the pianist Michael Korstick. The first four volumes were highly acclaimed by critics worldwide, a new dimension of Debussy cycles has been achieved. The booklet text is written by the Debussy expert Prof. Robert Orledge. Michael Korstick received his first piano lessons at the age of 9 and was first prize winner of the "Jugend musiziert" competition in Cologne at the age of 11. After graduating from high school he entered the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne as a student of Jürgen Tröster, and in 1974 he became a student of Hans Leygraf in Hanover. In the same year he took master classes from the Russian pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva and subsequently worked with her on several occasions. He made his formal concert début in Cologne in 1975, performing Beethoven's sonatas op.106 and op.111. Michael Korstick has made more than 50 CD recordings so far, among them most notably Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas (the complete edition was released in 2012). He has been the recipient of Germany's Echo Klassik prize in 2005, the MIDEM Classical Award Cannes in 2009, as well as of six "Awards of the German Record Critics", most recently in November 2014.

DEBUSSY Images. Pour le piano: Sarabande (orch. Ravel). Danse (orch. Ravel). Marche écossaise. La plus que lente • Jun Märkl, cond; Lyon Natl O • NAXOS 8.572296 (59:45)


This is the third volume in a series of Debussy’s orchestral music from the Lyon orchestra under its young German conductor; I haven’t heard the other two, but on this evidence I want to.


Images gets off to a good start with a Gigues of smooth, rounded, refined sonorities—little or no hint here of those tangy, fruity, acidic French orchestral timbres of a bygone era (still well in evidence in, e.g., Martinon’s EMI Debussy recordings of the 1970s). Rhythmic and dynamic detail is sharply observed. Phrases are beautifully shaped, with plenty of breathing space, building impressively to the tragic climax.


Ibéria is absolutely first-rate, displaying a masterly integration of the work’s many subtle tempo changes, in the service of Debussy’s incomparably atmospheric evocations: e.g., in “Par les rues et par les chemins,” the transition from sun-drenched glitter to the mysterious, unsettlingly shadowy world of the central part. “Les parfums de la nuit” is taken slowly (9:18; compare Boulez’s briskly efficient 7:30), with beautifully swung habanera rhythms. “Le matin d’un jour de fête” relishes to the full both the majestic, dazzling luminosity of the movement’s outer sections and the quirky eccentricity of its central adventures. I don’t know if Jun Märkl is a string player by training, but throughout he achieves an amazing variety of string sounds and articulations reminiscent of the great string-playing maestros of the past—above all, Monteux, and his classic 1963 version with the LSO (Philips). Listen to the extraordinary care Märkl lavishes over such details such as the violas’ taking over the ostinato in the central nocturnal procession of “Par les rues” ( léger et rythmé , and suddenly rather sinister-sounding in its new surroundings); the darkly delicate swaying of the divided violas’ and cellos’ introduction of the sinuous habanera in “Les parfums”; or the electrifying crescendos of the “giant guitar” effect in “Le matin.”


The performance of Rondes de printemps is spacious and finely detailed, holding tempo and power in reserve for an exciting quickening of the pulse in the coda.


All in all, these Images easily stand comparison to the best of the digital era. They come across as less self-conscious than Rattle/City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (EMI, with the British maestro’s characteristically imaginative drawing of detail—in Gigues , for instance, chillier northern mists, and a stronger sense of mounting desperation). On the other hand, they sound more emotionally engaged than Boulez/Cleveland (DG, in a gorgeously nuanced sonic tapestry dispatched with cool, patrician elegance).


Märkl lavishes just as much care on the short pieces, from the gorgeous kaleidoscope of marble tints in Ravel’s orchestration of the Sarabande to the swirling mists of the Marche écossaise, whose engaging Celtic camp conceals many touches of real Debussyan harmonic alchemy. The sinuous rubato of La Plus que lente ’s slow waltz (complete with exotically twanging cimbalom) is teased out to the manner born.


The recording is resonant and spacious, a natural concert hall balance with outstanding perspective and depth, and no artificial highlighting of detail. This conductor/orchestra partnership is clearly something out of the ordinary, and I’ll be watching for more from them. At the price, the disc is a terrific bargain, whether you’re a newcomer to these pieces or a seasoned collector of multiple versions.


FANFARE: Boyd Pomeroy

BERNSTEIN CONDUCTS DEBUSSY

Claude Debussy: Images, Prélude à l'apres-midi d'un faune, La Mer

Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Leonard Bernstein, conductor

Recorded live from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, 1989.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 86 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

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DEBUSSY Images pour orchestre. Prélude à l’près-midi d’un faune. La Mer • Leonard Bernstein, cond; Santa Cecila Natl Academy O • UNITEL 701608 (DVD: 86: 00)


Although Debussy did not figure largely in Bernstein’s repertoire, the conductor had an innate affinity for the composer’s music. We are therefore fortunate to have this concert, from scarcely a year before Bernstein’s death, preserving his interpretations of this repertoire in digital sound. Bernstein’s older Columbia recordings with the New York Philharmonic from 1960–63 are also still in print, although to duplicate this particular program one must acquire two different CDs (one from Sony, the other an ArkivMusic reissue). Those performances, however, are completely superseded by the present ones, both sonically and interpretively. In his later years Bernstein became decidedly self-indulgent, and his performances sometimes assumed bloated dimensions, as in the famous (or notorious) 1989 Christmas Day Berlin performance of the Beethoven Ninth. (I was blessed to attend that concert in person, being resident in East Berlin for my doctoral dissertation research at the time. As an interpretation it verged on the preposterous, but I still wouldn’t have missed it for all the world.) Here, however, he is in top form, eliciting performances with superb clarity of line, pellucid orchestral color and instrumental balance, and moderate tempi that are convincingly right at every point. Debussy is not the first thing I, as someone partial to Romantic German and Slavic orchestral repertoire, think to take off the shelf for personal listening pleasure, but Bernstein leaves me marveling at the sheer genius of these masterworks, providing a joy of rediscovery.


There are of course many performances of these works available on CD; most readers will already have their favorites, so I will not assay a broader discussion that in any case would exceed the bounds of this review. Regarding performances on DVD, this is the only complete performance of Images available. (For whatever reason, Bernstein altered the order of its three movements and placed Iberia in third position.) The Naxos issue with Alexander Rahbari and the Belgian Radio Symphony, which also has the Prélude and La Mer , omits Iberia in favor of the Nocturnes ; those are solid performances but not in the same class as these. The only other DVD to feature both the Prélude and La Mer is with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, reviewed negatively by Christopher Abbot in Fanfare 26:2 and positively by Colin Clarke in 32:3. I do not intend to enter the lists of the debates between champions and detractors of the German and American maestros; suffice it to say that in these works I prefer Bernstein’s clarity and sense of motion to Karajan’s lushness and perfumed languor. His DVD has more interesting camerawork to boot, with better lighting and more varied and better close-ups of the instrumentalists. The sound quality is excellent, the recordings having been made for commercial issue at the time. For those with more slender wallets, or who are uninterested in the visual aspects of an orchestral concert, these same performances were issued on CD by DG and are still in print as an ArkivMusic reissue. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

This is a highly realistic-sounding recording of a piano four-hands recital from the position of the players. In other words the keyboard is spread in front of the listener with the top end distinctly to the right. One can hear the pedalling and even the breathing of these two. I do slightly question the decision to record from this perspective in that no audience member is able to sit like this. However such a view is not unique in the recording world and they can be forgiven because it sounds so good. The engineering is not 100% perfect - there is a clear editing error in track 4 at 3.08, as if the digital scissors slipped. A reminder that modern recordings are made up of often hundreds of edits, considering which it is well disguised the rest of the time.

What of the music? Most collectors will have a substantial amount of Debussy's delicious piano music, but this collector discovered that most of this CD was new to him, a pleasure in itself. The early Petite Suite is the most famous music present. The even earlier Première Suite d'orchestre was only published in 2008 in this four-hand version. It is a lovelypiece throughout its full 26 minutes and does not sound like anyone except Debussy. The Six Épigraphes antiques are late Debussy and display his extraordinary command of advanced harmony. The ear is constantly tickled by the most strange sounds. The recital is completed by the rare 1st version of the Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire.

The two pianists are new to me and display a high degree of togetherness, if not the pin-sharp unity of, say, Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky. Given such unusual fare this is a fine set of performances and mostly very well recorded indeed. The notes by Gérald Hugon are detailed and well structured - and translated into elegant English by Susannah Howe. Hugon tells the purchaser everything he is likely to want to know about the discovery of the early compositions and their complex history, and then goes on to discuss each piece thoroughly. We have grown to expect such quality from Naxos, another star to them.

– Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

The largest collection of piano nocturnes on CD, celebrating the art of the romantic piano song without words. Over a century of repertoire in all modern recordings, plus a new booklet essay exploring the history and context of the nocturne. Composers of the 18th century such as Haydn and Mozart wrote notturnos as serenades to be sung and played at night time, both on an operatic stage and as independent pieces for entertainment. The early 19th century saw a rapid evolution in the technological, the cultural and the musical development of the piano - as an instrument of longer sustaining power and greater volume than before, offering a broader palette of tone-colours, presenting composers with the potential to write quasi-orchestrally for a single instrument, as Baroque composers had done for the organ. At the same time, musical forms were becoming looser, more shaped by extra-musical inspirations in literature, poetry and the natural world. The Irish composer John Field was the first to publish nocturnes for the solo piano as standalone works, rather than as poetic interludes within larger pieces such as suites or sonatas. Having inherited the form from Field, Frederic Chopin then raised the nocturne to new heights of inward expression. As much as the salon became a place for pianistic display of technique, it also became a space for quiet soliloquy through the course of the 19th century, accessible to the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie with access to an instrument at home and to the education required to play it. Thus publishers commissioned nocturnes from both greater and lesser composers to satisfy an ever-growing market. The nocturnes in this box cover all the great names of Romantic-era piano writing, and many lesser-known ones too. Many of the performances are played on instruments of the period, enabling listeners to immerse themselves into a 19th-century world of softer and more gentle colours and expression. This new box also features an essay by Peter Quantrill outlining the history of the nocturne and it's lasting hold upon our affections and imaginations.

Following a first release devoted to string trios by Hungarian composers (BIS-2107), the Trio Boccherini now presents a programme dedicated to works composed in France and Belgium during the first half of the 20th century. In a culture that so brilliantly cultivated the art of conversation, it is hardly surprising that early French string trios were often referred to as "Conversations à trois." The programme opens with a trio by Jean Cras, a Breton composer who produced a body of high-quality work while serving as an officer in the French navy. His string trio is a major work that incorporates a wide range of styles, including North African influences alongside echoes of Bach and Bartók. The next work, Eugène Ysaÿe's Le Chimay, is an intense work that is demanding for performers, both technically and emotionally. The work was so named because of the venue of it's first performance, long after the composer's death. Rejecting the modernism then in vogue, Jean Françaix's Trio appears light, airborne, playful, even impertinent. Both funny and profound, the work stands out for it's unique poetic quality. The programme ends with an arrangement for string trio of Claude Debussy's famous Clair de lune, a work of timeless beauty.

Music as ritual: On their debut GENUIN album, the internationally acclaimed piano duo Pisareva-Tchaidze presents three landmark works of early modernism. Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" - a piece that has stood at the heart of their repertoire for fifteen years - is set alongside Debussy's "epigraphes antiques" and Bartok's "Two Pictures". Written within the same turbulent historical moment shortly before the First World War, these compositions reflect a time of profound cultural upheaval. The album explores the interplay between them - their archaic energy, their rhythmic vitality, and their dialogue between past and present. The duo's finely calibrated ensemble playing brings striking rhythmic precision and luminous clarity of sound to these works.

The Elastic Heart of Youth Preface - Notes of Renewal If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying it's manifold apparent dissonances. - Jean Sibelius, In 1907, in conversation with Gustav Mahler. Originating in distinct musical dialects - Baroque, Classical, Nordic, Slavic, French, and contemporary - the works recorded here are bound together by a vivid, elastic heart: a profound spirit of vitality that endures through tension and release, stillness and motion, loss and restoration. Beneath their differing voices beats a kindred pulse shared with the natural world. Sibelius's Le Sapin evokes the spruce's calm and poise, it's hushed sonorities suggesting their own logic of repose. Janacek's Sonata 1.X.1905 bears witness - urgent, searching, unafraid-it's broken arcs invoking the dissonances of modernity's estrangement from nature and the fragile openings through which rebirth begins. Debussy's etude pour les arpeges composes and La fille aux cheveux de lin shimmer with shifting light and color, while Clair de lune unfolds in the moon's tender chiaroscuro, a meditation of light, shadow, and serenity. Mozart's Fantasy in D minor restores grace and clarity not by denying shadow, but by transfiguring it; it's improvisatory nature finds form through discovery. Scarlatti's sonatas dance with quick, inventive pulse: sunlight on stone, castanets crossing through the air. Their brilliance is youthful joy tempered by seasoned experience. Gross's Solace turns inward towards repose. Here the heart practices a different virtuosity - the courage to be calm, to let resonance and renewal begin. Even in this quietude, her music recalls nature's adaptability, it's patient recalibrations in the face of change. Missy Mazzoli's The Elastic Heart of Youth gathers all these energies into a radiant celebration of life. It's tensile rhythms and glowing harmonies echo the supple strength of the living world-the capacity to bend, to adapt, to begin again.

Alongside their respective solo careers, Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie regularly meet to perform as a highly sought-after piano duo. Both born and raised in Montreal, they have formed a musical partnership that goes back to the 1980s, developing a musical intimacy present throughout their wide-ranging repertoire. Their complicity has been strengthened over decades of playing concerts and recording together. This, their ninth album for Chandos, continues their exploration of works by Debussy. The programme features transcriptions by Ravel, Dutilleux, Woollett, Durand, Roques, and the composer of some of his best-known orchestral works (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Nocturnes) and solo piano pieces (Clair de lune, La Soirée dans Grenade, La plus que lente, Rêverie). These sit alongside Lindaraja and en blanc et noir, original compositions for two pianos. Mercier and Lortie alternate the first- and second-player responsibilities in this mixture of works for two pianos and piano duet.

Claude Debussy's piano music plays a central role in his compositional oeuvre. Debussy combined Russian as well as Oriental and East Asian influences with his admiration for Bach and the French harpsichord masters to create a relatively compact body of work. The classical contours and absolute clarity of Debussy's musical forms and the unity and self-contained character of his work, for which he owed a great debt to Rameau, contradict the widely held association of his music with vague, indistinct impressionism, which Debussy vehemently rejected. Debussy's music is characterized by it's refinement of tone colors, transforming sound into a unique and highly nuanced world of expression. Debussy's emphasis on tone color is directly linked to his harmonic style: while being neither attached to tonality nor leaving it entirely behind, Debussy transcended the formative effect of functional harmonic relationships through the use of chromaticism, and pentatonic and exotic scales. Mario Haring was born into a German-Japanese family of musicians in Hanover Germany in 1989 and grew up in Berlin. He began playing violin and piano at the age of three and began receiving formal piano lessons in 1994. As a soloist and chamber musician, Mario Haring has won sixteen first prizes at music competitions all over the globe.

DEBUSSY Estampes. Pour le piano. Suite bergamasques: Clair de lune. Préludes: Feux d’artifice. Des pas sur la neige; La puerta del vino; Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest. Etudes: pour les sonorities opposes. Berceuse héroique. Morceau de concours. Ballade. Pièce sans titre. Elégie • Roberta Rust (pn) • CENTAUR 2867 (71:18)


This is my first encounter with the playing of Roberta Rust, a pianist who has studied with John Perry and Ivan Davis, among others. She now has an active international career and her previous recordings include piano works by Haydn, Villa-Lobos, and Prokofiev. On this disc she proves herself a first-rate Debussy player, someone who listens acutely to each sound she makes, who characterizes the music in a personal way while at the same time honoring Debussy’s very detailed notation, and who has an arsenal of touches—and a beautifully recorded piano—at her disposal. The disc provides a fine cross section of Debussy piano output, from the early, ubiquitous “Clair de lune” (1890) to his great triptych Estampes (1903) and his final piano pieces, including the sad little Elegie (1915). For me, Estampes is the highlight, with the numerous fade-ins and fade-outs of ideas under superb control in all three movements: “Pagodes” and “Soirée dans Grenade” come across as wonderfully evocative improvisations—and not even a Richter has always been so successful at this; and “Jardins sous la pluie” is truly a tempest in a théière. In Pour le piano, the Prelude and Toccata are never dry—and the latter concludes with tremendous reserves of speed and color. Imagination and virtuosity are equally in the service of “Feux d’artifice” and “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest” (technically the two hardest of Debussy’s 24 Préludes ), and the hypnotic mood of “Des pas sur la neige” (the slowest and easiest of them) is captured perfectly. This is quite simply one of the finest Debussy discs I have heard in recent memory, and I hope that it won’t be long before Rust gives a complete set of the Préludes or the two sets of Images. Very highly recommended.


FANFARE: Charles Timbrell

After the five-volume complete recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Paavali Jumppanen’s new recording on Ondine turns attention to Claude Debussy’s (1862–1918) piano works. This release includes complete Préludes together with the Children’s Corner. Debussy’s oeuvre has been explored both by the amateur pianist and the most legendary virtuosos of the keyboard. Throughout his career Debussy sought new ways to express his musical vistas. He began numerous large compositional projects and between these big ventures wrote miniatures such as songs and piano pieces. Debussy’s 24 piano preludes were published in two sets in 1910 and 1913. These miniatures are varied in character and style, and include, among others, references to literature, poetry, nature, the Mediterranean landscape and the events in Paris during Debussy’s lifetime. The six pieces forming the cycle Children’s Corner (1908) evoke adult recollections of childhood. The set bears a dedication to Debussy’s daughter Chouchou and includes some of Debussy’s most well-known piano pieces, including The Snow is Dancing and Golliwogg’s cake walk. A dedicated performer of French music, Paavali Jumppanen often performs the large cycles of Debussy’s late period, namely the Préludes and the Études.

REVIEW:

This fascinating new set, superbly recorded, presents the bona fides of the Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen as a musician of keen intelligence and almost preternatural sensitivity. One of the most striking aspects of his approach to this thricefamiliar repertory is a predilection for extremely spacious, unrushed tempos. Yet as soon as you notice this, it becomes apparent that his choice of tempo is perfectly conceived for what he has to say in the music, which is a great deal indeed. Although a first listener response to any given piece may be to wonder at the particular interpretative choices, after only a few bars it becomes difficult to imagine how it could be played any other way.

– Gramophone