Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

On this disc, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune – possibly Claude Debussy’s most popular work for orchestra – is framed by two of his greatest achievements in the medium, La Mer and Images pour orchestre. All three works are programmatic, but Debussy’s concern was to create an atmosphere rather than any naturalistic likeness. The Prélude is a case in point – while taking his inspiration from a pastoral poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, Debussy famously told a conductor who wanted a more detailed explanation: ‘It’s a shepherd playing the flute, sitting on his bum in the grass!’ In La Mer, Debussy abstains from the various clichés of so many other musical depictions of water, and instead creates an immediately recognizable seascape, largely through a pioneering use of various instrumental timbres, once described as ‘an impressionism of sounding dots’. Soon after La Mer, the composer started on Images, in which he went even further: although using a large orchestra, Debussy mainly avoids big sonorities, concentrating instead on unusual sound combinations and on transparency. His aim was compose a cycle focusing on the colours of three countries, while as far as possible avoiding the clichés associated with their music. Of its three panels, the expansive middle one, Ibéria, is often performed as an independent piece, but its Spanish colouring takes on new shades when framed by Scottish mists and the freshness of spring in France. The present disc combines new recordings by Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui with the team’s acclaimed performance of La Mer, first released in 2007 on Seascapes, a programme of sea-related works. The reviewer in American Record Guide called it ‘the most astounding, effective, and beautiful recording of La Mer I have ever heard’ and in BBC Music Magazine it was described as ‘an unequivocally world-class performance’.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

DEBUSSY OGAWA (PIANO) THE SOLO PIANO WORKS- 1'ERE ARABESQUE, L74/1; 2'EME ARABESQUE L74/2; DANSE (TARENTELLE STYRIENNE), L77; BALLADE (SLAVE) POUR LEPIANO, L78; VALSE ROMANTIQUE, L79; REVERIE, L76; MAZURKSA, L75;ETC.

Classical Music

In celebration of Claude Debussy's Centenary in 2018, the French pianist Vincent Larderet presents a recording of three masterpieces: Images (Book I), Pr�ludes (Book II), and the world premiere recording of Andr� Caplet's transcription of the Symphonic Fragments from Le Martyre de saint S�bastien, revised and completed by Vincent Larderet. Following three highly acclaimed recordings that won 23 awards worldwide and were nominated for the prestigious ICMA Award, ARS Produktion presents an 80-minute album by a pianist whose interpretations have been compared to legends of the piano such as Michelangeli, Arrau and Zimerman and who was praised for his "astonishing range of pianistic colours" (PIANO News, Germany). Mr. Larderet is the Artistic Director of the Piano au Musee Wurth international festival in France, and in 2014 was appointed "Honorable International Artist-In-Residence" of the Hong Kong Music and Performing School.

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.

This newest release from the Naxos Idil Biret archive features the works of Claude Debussy. "For well versed insiders of music, Idil Biret is since years a trusted, respected and beloved artist... The discipline of her powerful grasp and approach of the music has led, especially for works of our century, to a stylistic congruence between the written score and the interpretation...(that) makes us all aware of an outstanding artistic potency of the highest standards of excellence!" (DIE WELT, Germany 1979) "Idil Biret takes the opening movement of Debussy's Children's Corner very briskly and impetuously, but the performance then settles down and is sensitive and well characterized, especially the closing Golliwog's Cakewalk. Good recording and recommendable couplings too." (PENGUIN GUIDE, England 2009) "There is no question whatever that Biret's reading of the Ravel Gaspard de la nuit takes it's place among the most delicately wrought Ravel interpretations by any of the many great pianists renowned for their performances of French piano music." (SOHO WEEKLY NEWS, USA 1977)