Debussy Piano Music

Pianist Daniel Ericourt (1903-88) boasted an impressive artistic resume, including working relationships with Isadora Duncan, Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland (Ericourt premiered his Passacaglia), and Georges Enescu. In his teens Ericourt got to know Claude Debussy and his family, collaborated with the composer in a benefit concert, and turned pages at the premiere of his Cello Sonata. Following decades of international touring, Ericourt joined the Peabody Conservatory faculty and later became Artist-in Residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In the early 1960s Ericourt recorded the complete cycle of Debussy's solo piano works for the Kapp label, and despite generally excellent reviews they shortly disappeared from the catalog. The collection now appears on CD for the first time–and merits serious consideration.

Behzod Abduraimov joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with this kaleidoscope of miniatures miniatures that are in fact fairly gigantic, and showcase the Uzbek pianists extreme virtuosity and sensitivity. Each movement is in itself a miniature, and taken together they form a kaleidoscope of human emotions and images of all kinds, says Behzod Abduraimov. In his view, the pieces in Debussys Childrens Corner are not intended for young piano students, but for adults, so that they can immerse themselves in the world of children with a little nostalgia and a lot of humor. When it comes to Chopin, each prelude has a different musical essence, creates its own atmosphere.

Music in Time of War, the new double-album from pianist Kirill Gerstein, places the music of Komitas, pioneer of ethnomusi- cology and founder of the Armenian national school of music, alongside that of Claude Debussy, a seminal composer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who held a deep admiration of Komitas’s music. Both composers were profoundly affected by the implosion of their worlds – Komitas by the Armenian Genocide, Debussy by the First World War – and their music reflects a close emotional alignment. Music in Time of War grew from Gerstein’s fascination with music’s power to reflect a narrative. The project will be released as a double CD album and will be accompanied by a hardcover book containing a series of illustrations and detailed essays in three languages commissioned by the pianist.

The piano works of Claude Debussy rank amongst the best-loved and most expressive music ever written. From the atmospheric Suite bergamasque, including the exquisite Clair de lune, to the delightful Children's Corner Suite and the exuberant L'isle joyeuse, this 2-CD set from piano master Roger Woodward was highly acclaimed when first released, and is made available again here.

Grumiaux’s elevated intellectual profile is put to exalted use in the Debussy Sonata. He has a quicksilver response to the music’s twists and turns and an alertness to the necessary momentum in the first movement. He is thus forward moving but flexible with a fast vibrato and multi variegated tonal response at once apposite and unostentatious. Listen at 2.15 to about as extravagant a portamento as he ever made on disc. If you want to hear fluent and incisive duo playing listen to Grumiaux and Hajdu in the Intermède where understanding of motivic details and larger structure reigns supreme.

Regular duet and two-piano partners, Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie have returned to the studio for this all-Debussy programme. The album features duets written by the composer himself – such as the Petite Suite, the Six Épigraphes antiques, and the Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire, as well as a number of arrangements of his solo piano pieces (the Première Arabesque, La Fille aux cheveux de lin, and the Ballade slave). The album ends with André Caplet’s monumental arrangement of Debussy’s best-known orchestral work, La Mer. Stripping the work of its orchestral colours, this two-piano version allows the listener to appreciate more easily Debussy’s ground-breaking harmonic innovation. The album was recorded in the concert hall at Snape Maltings, in Suffolk, using a pair of Bösendorfer 280 VC grand pianos.