Kultur SPIEGEL, January 2005: "There are good pianists, there are grandiose pianists and there is Evgeni Koroliov: In each recording the Russian pianist, who hitherto was mainly to be heard playing Bach, sets new standards. With Debussy he competes with champions such as Gieseking or Michelangelo - and triumphs: this round of portraits of atmosphere, hovering wonderfully between jest and seriousness, has never before sounded so expressive or transparent."

This selection contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

Debussy: Nocturnes, L. 91, La damoiselle élue, L. 62 & Le ma

IDIGITAL: LA MER,PRELUDE,FAUN

Along with Horowitz's famous interpretation, Van Cliburn's is one that makes every bar of the Barber Sonata really speak. Even in an excessively dry recording he manages to suggest an epic dimension, with song, dance, struggle and celebration held in admirable balance.

And it is not just the Barber which makes this an exceptionally desirable reissue. Cliburn's Mozart is beautifully shaded, scrupulously stylish and sensitive to harmonic pulls towards the dark side; and his Debussy is both supple and suavely textured, with a wonderfully judged rhapsodic abandon in ''La soiree dans Grenade''. I could understand some listeners finding the Mozart a little too well-scrubbed and toy-soldierish in places, and there is a tendency for shapes in the Debussy pieces to be too spasmodic—the Octaves Study is not helped by an exaggerated response to caesuras, and ''Jardins sous la pluie'' is too fast and marred by persistent mis-reading of B sharps as B naturals. But all that detracts very little from a truly distinguished souvenir of Cliburn's artistry.

-- Gramophone (5/1991)

RAVEL: TRIO DEBUSSY, RESPIGH

Classical Music

Franck, Debussy & Enesco: Violin Sonatas

KAZUHITO & NAOKO YAMASHITA- GU

Maybe reviewers fuss too much about couplings, but in this case, with the Prelude a l'apresmidi dun faune these days extending the timings of virtually every Debussy issue, and with nearly two decades separating it from the later Jeux and La boite a joujoux, as well as it not being a ballet—oh, all right: it may have been conceived for the stage, and was choreographed (and vulgarized) by Nijinsky in 1912—surely a more enterprising choice in keeping with the theme would have been the contemporary and unjustly neglected ballet Khamma. With the standard of performance on offer here, that would indeed have formed a cherishable disc. As it happens, Tilson Thomas's Prelude is very fine: richly drawn and, compared to the recent versions from Boulez (DG) and Solti (Decca), traditionally drawn out, long-breathed and languorous. Overloud horns in the fourth bar would seem to forecast fog, not heat-haze; in other respects the balance (from EMI's Abbey Road Studio No. 1) is good, with integrated but focused solo strings, harps and antique cymbals.

"Toy-boxes are really towns in which the toys live like people" wrote Andre Helle who, in 1913, devised the scenario for La boite a joujoux (adding "or perhaps towns are just boxes in which people live like toys"). But Debussy made no attempt at meaningful symbolism; "something to amuse the children—nothing more" he said. In giving life to the wooden figures, and with its prominent role for piano, inevitably one's thoughts turn to Petrushka, far more dramatically effective, but hardly a children's story—well, not a child of 1913 anyway. Tilson Thomas is more artful than Torteher on Chandos: in the first tableau his doll dances her waltz with more look-at-me' allure and grace—Tortelier's rubato is comparatively (perhaps aptly) mechanical—and, after Punch has biffed the little soldier on the nose, an angrier captain pops his head out of the box. On the debit side, a wooden doll surely wouldn't pray as quietly as does the LSO clarinet in the following tableau after the battle (track 4, 4'45": the marking is only piano); the distant shepherd's piping in the third tableau is not really distant at all, and the flutes are too loud at the moment of embrace between the soldier and the doll at the end of the scene. Whilst I'm grumbling, Sony's notes don't include a synopsis—as entertainment, this music, unlike Jeux, is dependent on knowledge of the stage action (Chandos supply a detailed scenario). If forced to make a choice between the two, it would be Tilson Thomas; his is the more polished, confident and stylish account.

Perhaps Debussy was attracted to the idea of a children's ballet in 1913 to cleanse himself from the sins of Nijinsky's staging of his Prelude and Jeux (May 1912 and 1913 respectively). While enthusiastically welcoming Simon Rattle's Jeux (EMI), CH noted that the music's free-born invention was "sacrificed a little in favour of a richer romanticism". It could be argued, too, that Haitink (Philips) achieves his unrivalled clarity and delicacy at the expense of a degree of passion. I happen to feel that both, more successfully than Tilson Thomas, and in their quite different ways, achieve a special fantasy, and that contrejour lighting which Debussy was aiming at in his orchestration to oversimplify, it's a question of ensuring equal prominence for the woodwind. The LSO strings are unsteady in their opening four-bar chord (unusually played here as two plus two), but there's a line of accumulating energy from the main theme at fig. 51 (12'29") through to the climax at fig. 71 (16'23") which is less easy to feel in Rattle's and Haitink's accounts. With a slightly faster basic tempo this Jeux bears out Tilson Thomas's judgement, as he himself put it in GRAMOPHONE in February 1991, in knowing "what to hold on to and what to throw away".

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

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

The works on this disc were arranged by Hiro Fujikake.

This coupling offers two youthful concerto works and a solo interlude. The most substantial work is the Britten Piano Concerto (placed last on the disc), written in 1938 when the composer was 25. It is a boisterous piece, unstintingly virtuosic and with clear overtones of Prokofiev. It suits Douglas well, and he tackles the relentless passagework with spirited enthusiasm. His tone is rather hard, particularly in the fortes, but this is not entirely unsuitable given the steely, driven quality of the music. The first-movement cadenza is genuinely exciting, and the point when the orchestra re-enters in a moment of calm retreat (track 7 at 9'21''), with Douglas providing a rare beauty of tone and colour in the following lyrical passage, is beguiling... The Debussy Fantaisie (1890), which despite the composer’s efforts remained unperformed during his lifetime, receives a strong performance with crystalline clarity in the passagework... His playing breathes with natural phrasing and articulation, and has a sure-footed integrity...

-- Tim Parry, Gramophone [10/1997]

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Digital CD 16Bit 44.1Khz. Originally recorded in: DSD

"...In each of these performances the RSNO, keenly responsive to Denève after his seven seasons as chief conductor, confirm the absolute precision, transparency and - in Jeux as much as anywhere – passion required for these scores. The detail in Images is exquisite (with a lovely oboe d'amore solo by Katherine Mackintosh). The Nocturnes, especially Fêtes, achieve a shimmering, decidedly un-Monet-like glaze, and La Mer erupts and glistens."

- Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 12, May 2012

Classical Music

DEBUSSY: PRELUDES FOR PIANO BO

The Halle and Sir Mark Elder follow their previous highly acclaimed DeBussy albums, with a stunning orchestral collection including a world premiere recording. This collection features works from across the composer's career, from his early winning of the Prix de Rome, as a result of which he composed the delicate cantata La Demoiselle elue in 1887. Recorded following the highly acclaimed Proms performance and featuring stand-out soloists Anna Stephany and Sophie Bevan, hailed by reviewers. The enigmatic Nocturnes date from 1897-9 and show the composer at the height of his orchestral powers, in music that is highly evocative of mood and which displays deft instrumental writing. Mastery of instrumental writing is further evidenced in the technically demanding Premiere Rhapsodie, which calls upon the full range of emotions from the soloist; here the Halle's Principal Clarinet, Sergio Castello Lopez. The album features a world premiere recording of Colin Matthew's orchestration of the piano piece Les soirs illumines par l'ardeur du charbon, unknown until it's discovery in 2001. This arrangement follows Matthews' universally acclaimed orchestrations of the DeBussy Preludes.

Classical Music

Classical Music

THE HEIFETZ COLLECTION VOL 6 -

Classical Music

"When Debussy's String Quartet is so often partnered on disc by Ravel's, a considerable chunk of the enjoyment to be had from this recording is down to the simple fact that it's a Debussy-only programme. It's true that Debussy left slim pickings for chamber string ensembles, but the Brodsky Quartet have shown here what musical riches are possible with the combination of Debussy and string quartet forces when a bit of lateral thinking comes into play, together with a few guest artists...Just when works suitable for string quartet really are running out, in steps Brodsky viola player Paul Cassidy with his string quartet arrangement of Rêverie, originally for solo piano. Written contemporaneously to the Quartet, Debussy may have intended it as little more than a charming salon piece, but Cassidy's scoring is so similar to that of the quartet that the work has taken on a new identity. Far from feeling like an “And finally...” bonbon, its new gravitas makes it a fitting bookend to the programme, a partner to the Quartet, and an unexpected delight."

- Charlotte Gardner, BBC [04-18-2012]

The Brodsky Quartet celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. Formed in 1972, the Quartet quickly emerged at the forefront of the international chamber music scene. It has performed more than 2000 concerts and made more than fifty highly acclaimed recordings. Now exclusive Chandos artists, the Brodsky players are releasing their second album on Chandos with guest soloists Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and the harpist Sioned Williams.

The Trio for piano, violin, and cello is an early work, written before Debussy established his own very distinctive musical language heard in pieces such as La Mer. Another early piece, Rêverie, for piano, was written by the young, struggling composer at a time when he was trying to make a living in Paris. The easiest market to break into for a composer was the salon, where songs and not-too-taxing piano music were in demand. Rêverie was one of several charming and tuneful works that Debussy wrote for this scene.

In a somewhat different league, the String Quartet is considered a defining work in the history of chamber music. Sensual and impressionistic, it employs a cyclic structure that constituted a split from the rules of classical form and pointed the way forward. In the words of Pierre Boulez, Debussy freed chamber music from ‘rigid structure, frozen rhetoric, and rigid aesthetics’.

The Deux Danses, made up of the ‘Danse sacrée’ and ‘Danse profane’, complete the disc. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Parisian instrument makers Pleyel invented a ‘chromatic harp’ which dispensed with pedals and achieved the full chromatic compass from two rows of strings that slanted across one another. Debussy was approached to write two pieces intended for a final examination of the Pleyel model. ‘Danse sacrée’ makes use of Church modes, while ‘Danse profane’ is a kind of sarabande. The ‘competition’ aspect of the pieces is highlighted by the fact that, after the opening introduction, the harpist has no more than six bars’ rest. As it happened, the Pleyel model never caught on, and the works are now always performed on a pedal harp.

English translation by Hugh MacDonald.

"...The casting shows the depth of ENO 30 years ago, with Eilene Hannan as Mélisande, more knowing, less naive than some portrayals, the baritone Robert Dean a Pelléas with just the right mix of muscularity and lyric grace, Neil Howlett the conflicted Golaud and John Tomlinson the pontificating Arkel." - Andrew Clements, The Guardian U.K.

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.

DEBUSSY 12 Etudes. Estampes. Deux Arabesques. L’Isle Joyeuse • Mariangela Vacatello (pn) • BRILLIANT 94371 (76:40)


Every so often—perhaps inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s eponymous poem—I contemplate things that might have been, and quite frequently my contemplations involve music: What would Beethoven’s 10th have sounded like? How much richer would we be today had Brahms not destroyed his early string quartets out of mortal fear of being called an epigone? Would the world be a different place had Dinu Lipatti been able to carry out his wish to record The Well-Tempered Clavier ? One of the reasons I find these questions so fascinating is because we can neither know their answer nor can we rely on what we do know to hypothesize it—after all, Beethoven’s Ninth is strikingly different from his Eighth; Brahms’s lost string quartets are forever gone; and Lipatti never got around to record a single prelude and fugue by Bach. Before hearing this new recording featuring the young pianist Mariangela Vacatello, it had never dawned on me that Debussy’s late piano works—his set of 12 Etudes for piano—present the perfect Borgesian riddle: Would Debussy have abandoned the Impressionist idiom had he lived another few years, or would we be speaking of Debussy’s Impressionism merely as a phase that eventually yielded to a new musical language?


You may be wondering how my musings about where Debussy’s music may have ended up had the composer not succumbed to cancer at age 56 relate to the task at hand. Well, I respectfully submit that they are relevant here because what I enjoyed the most about Vacatello’s recording is how exquisitely and unapologetically she conveys the striking novelty of these masterpieces. Like Mitsuko Uchida in her classic Philips recording, Vacatello does not unduly look for Impressionism in the etudes, nor does she try to tame these visionary and occasionally wild scores. She does not over-pedal, she does not soft-pedal, she does not play legato when Debussy calls for non-legato, and she does not seek to create tonal haze when the score does not call for such effects. Instead, Vacatello presents these works for what they are­—experiments with a fascinating musical language Debussy had not yet fully figured out.


In the early works, Vacatello is equally compelling. Like her compatriots Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Aldo Ciccolini, and Maurizio Pollini, Vacatello subscribes to the Italian tradition of playing Debussy, which is characterized by rhythmic precision, a stronger emphasis on primary colors, and a certain degree of level-headedness. While it is true that Vacatello’s Debussy does not soar or intoxicate like that of Samson François, I find that it is just as fascinating. I am particularly impressed with L’Isle Joyeuse , in which Vacatello (unlike many pianists who play this piece) refuses the temptation to sectionalize—and, I believe, trivialize—in favor of a cohesive narrative that slowly builds towards apotheosis. The engineering is outstanding. This recording comes with my highest recommendation. Vacatello is definitely a pianist to watch.


FANFARE: Radu A. Lelutiu