Classical Music

Classical Music

This album has a fascinating concept. Pianist Lori Sims first performs each work by Debussy on piano, and then Andrew Rathbun, saxophone, and Jeremy Siskind, piano perform each work, directly following the other, in Siskind's more jazz oriented arrangements. Lori Sims received the first prize gold medal at the 1998 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. Other prizes include first place co-winner of the 1994 Felix Bartholdy-Mendelssohn Competition in Berlin and winner of the 1993 American Pianists' Association Competition with outstanding distinction from the jury. She has performed throughout America, Europe and China, including the Israel Philharmonic, the Utah Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Spokane Chamber Orchestra, the Kalamazoo Symphony and the NordDeutsche-Rundfunks Orchestra. Toronto native Andrew Rathbun is widely esteemed as one of the most creative and accomplished saxophonists, composers and bandleaders of his generation. On tenor and soprano saxophones he has achieved a rare depth of lyricism, authoritative swing and compositional intelligence. Recording steadily as a leader since the late 1990s, he has documented his stirring original music with an array of extraordinary lineups, featuring the talents of such greats as Kenny Wheeler, Billy Hart, George Garzone, Phil Markowitz and Bill Stewart. “Rathbun’s lines dance and glide,” writes David Whiteis of JazzTimes, “reflecting both childlike wonder and well-honed artistry.” Pianist-composer Jeremy Siskind is “a genuine visionary” (Indianapolis Star) who “seems to defy all boundaries” (JazzInk) with music “rich in texture and nuance” (Downbeat). A top finisher in several national and international jazz piano competitions, Siskind is a two-time laureate of the American Pianists Association and the winner of the Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition. Since making his professional debut juxtaposing Debussy’s Etudes with jazz standards at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Siskind has established himself as one of the nation’s most innovative and virtuosic modern pianists.

Debussy had been planning Preludes for two or three years before the first book was published in 1910. He seems to have been at work on the second book by the end of 1911 and the volume was published in 1913. Whereas Bach and Chopin used their Preludes as something of a technical exercise, composing one for each musical key, Debussy’s were free-form and full of his signature expressive indulgences. Each one has a different descriptive title that gives clues about what was going through the composer’s mind when he was writing them, from Shakespearean dances to underwater cathedrals. What Debussy did in the Preludes and earlier works with a similar inspiration was composing with sounds rather than notes. It is that, rather than their picturesque qualities, that changed history. Debussy did nothing less than liberate music from the domination by functional harmony which had prevailed for three centuries. Tonality becomes color.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) for piano by Claude Debussy. Soloist: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

Another ravishing release from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – so what are you waiting for?

A momentum has been building throughout Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s superb Debussy exploration and there is a sense of culmination in this, the fourth volume. With one still to go, the mind boggles as to how he will top this.

In fact, more of the same would be achievement enough. The fascinating thing about Bavouzet’s Debussy is the way he upsets notions of how this composer should go, while still giving more than a nod to tradition. So here are the Images and 12 Etudes firm of hand, projected with a strength and sense of line that one might expect could dull the music’s hazy brilliance. Yet there is never any danger of shifting sands congealed, as along with forward propulsion we get any number of miraculous, nearly hidden details. Imagination is never the slave of clarity, but clarity there is – the better to appreciate the richness of the prize.

Few pianists can have done all of these things at once in this repertoire so adeptly, so naturally. For anyone looking for the must-have Debussy collection, Bavouzet is surely the leading contender. Volume 2 of this series was pipped to the post in this year’s Gramophone Awards by Paul Lewis’s Beethoven (which went on to claim the Record of the Year prize). It would be no surprise if, after this release, the Frenchman is in the running again.

-- Gramophone [12/2008]


This outstanding Debussy series has been praised vigorously by my colleagues Jed Distler and Christophe Huss, and I can only second their enthusiasm. Bavouzet's Debussy offers the epitome of style, virtuosity, taste, and interpretive intelligence. His touch is miraculous. In the second book of Images, listen to Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut: each layer of harmony has its own independent dynamics and phrasing, making the piano sound like a miniature orchestra being played by far more than a mere two hands. In Mouvement (from Set I) Bavouzet's choice of tempo is perfect, his rhythmic inflections infectious but never mechanical. Listening to him is a joy.

If the Études remain Debussy's least popular set of piano pieces, this performance should go a long way toward easing their passage into the pianistic mainstream. It's not just the humor that Bavouzet projects in the first piece ("pour les cing doigts"), or his natural flexibility and brilliance in the octave study--there is also his sensitivity to texture and sonority. Indeed, the chromatic study in Book 2 makes some amazing sounds that look forward to Conlon Nancarrow's player piano studies. Like the other releases in this series, the entire recital is perfectly recorded. There's also a bonus in the form of a completion by Roy Howat of Debussy's first sketches for the arpeggio study. It's nice to have, if hardly necessary, but the entire series remains an essential acquisition for pianophiles and Debussy fans alike.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

In a series of five compact discs WERGO releases Claude Debussy's complete works for piano - masterly played by Nina Tichman - in a series of five compact discs. Music is for Debussy part of nature, originating from it and returning to it. As a sensitive mediator it allows one a glimpse of an original state of things in which man and nature were one - and at the same time documents painfully the loss of this original state. Expressions like "music of silence" and "music in the open air" are key expressions in understanding Debussy's works.

In a series of five compact discs WERGO releases Claude Debussy's complete works for piano - masterly played by Nina Tichman. Music is for Debussy part of nature, originating from it and returning to it. As a sensitive mediator it allows one a glimpse of an original state of things in which man and nature were one - and at the same time documents painfully the loss of this original state. Expressions like "music of silence" and "music in the open air" are key expressions in understanding Debussy's works.

Music is a secret form of mathematics, the elements of which have a share in eternity. It lives in the movement of water, in the undulating motion of changing winds; nothing is more musical than a sunset! (Claude Debussy) In a series of five compact discs WERGO releases Claude Debussy's complete works for piano - masterly played by Nina Tichman. Music is for Debussy part of nature, originating from it and returning to it. As a sensitive mediator it allows one a glimpse of an original state of things in which man and nature were one - and at the same time documents painfully the loss of this original state. Expressions like "music of silence" and "music in the open air" are key expressions in understanding Debussy's works. In 1915 Debussy composed the Douze �tudes, his last work for piano solo. He dedicated the work to Fr�d�ric Chopin, thus consciously taking his place in the ranks of a great tradition and formulating a claim for the genre "�tude" which extends far beyond its function as a technical practice piece. The titles of the �tudes are abstract, indeed, compared with the poetic ideas of the "Pr�ludes" and other piano works they could in fact be described as truly scientific in their precision. The theme of each title is the technical problem dealt with in each individual piece (intervals, chromaticism, repetitions etc.). The works which follow these dry titles display bold freedom and fantasy, shimmering beauty which leaves far behind all trace of "�tude" character. The �tudes, of all things, the epitome of dry school-book learning, become a feast of creativity.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

This CD completes the CD series "Works for Piano" by Claude Debussy played by the American pianist Nina Tichman. This fifth CD focusses on the second book of "Pr�ludes". Themes which moved Debussy in a human way are encircled and appear again and again, for example portraits. In the second volume of the "Pr�ludes" the personalities portrayed are of a particularaly scurrilous type: General Edward Lavine was a famous personality in the revue theaters around 1910; half general, half clown, he appeared in a grotesque uniform and represented the clown-like side of military life. Samuel Pickwick Esquire, Perpetual President, Member of the Pickwick Club is a character from Charles Dickens' novel "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club", which Debussy pays loving homage to. Festive occasions is another theme that recurs again and again in Debussy's work. The brilliant closing work of the "Pr�ludes" ("Feux d'artifice") describes the fireworks on the French national holiday. With a loving dedication Debussy presented his little daughter Chouchou with his "Children's Corner". Each of the six miniatures he wrote as a present for her is a confession and a treasure.

Includes work(s) by Claude Debussy. Ensemble: Ulster Orchestra. Conductor: Yan Pascal Tortelier.

Classical Music

Classical Music