Debussy

The program for this album of Debussy's chamber music is unusual: except for the enchanting Syrinx, for solo flute, all the pieces are written in the classical chamber music forms. Only in the realm of chamber music did Debussy do this, and hearing a group of such works together on the same bill is of considerable interest. Here Debussy could not get away without modulating, but the balance among texture, harmonic field, and fixed, sonata-like forms shift in fascinating ways.

Roxane Elfasci from Paris uploaded in 2016 her take on the classical composer Claud Debussy's biggest hit Clair de Lune. 5 years later the video have amassed 7M views and the comments from fans all over the world have been overwhelming. The channel is constantly increasing with followers. Roxane is a professional musician in classical guitar and has studied at schools such as the Aulnay-sous-Bois Conservatory and the Pôle Supérieur de Paris. In addition, she also has a degree in musicology from the Sorbonne University in Paris. At last Clair de Lune was released on DSPs early May and the track has already amassed over 500k streams. We can now look forward to an album, where Roxane continue to interpret Debussy’s music.

These 25 tracks demonstrate Debussy’s incomparable ability to create atmosphere, drama and beautiful melodies. From the much-loved piano music, including Clair de Lune and La Cathédrale Engloutie, to orchestral and chamber music masterpieces – La Mer, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Sonata for Violin & Piano – all are featured here in landmark performances.

With the present disc, Pascal Rophé and his Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire pay tribute to their great countryman, Claude Debussy – but not with the standard orchestral fare. Debussy Orchestrated paints a portrait of a light-hearted composer, seen through the eyes of two of his collaborators, Henri Büsser and André Caplet, who transferred the works recorded here from the keyboard to the orchestra. In Petite Suite, composed for piano four hands in 1899, Debussy makes allusions to Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, the poet who so often inspired him.

The violin and piano sonatas of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel draw on foreign idioms: gypsy music in Debussy's case and African-American blues in Ravel's. But they remain completely French works, spiced with something exotic, and British violinist Jennifer Pike forges interpretations that keep this in mind. Start with the "Blues" slow movement of the Ravel Violin Sonata in G major: Pike and her accompanist, Martin Roscoe, avoid exaggerating the bluesy qualities of the music and instead emphasize the odd, almost tense disconnection between violin and piano that, combined with the languid blues melodies, gives this piece its special piquancy.

This marks the first release with Robin Ticciati leading the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, and it makes the requisite splash. There's a world premiere: even if you're not on board with the trend of enlarging the repertory through arrangements of works that are perfectly good in their original form, you will likely be seduced by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená's ravishing reading of Debussy's voice-and-piano Ariettes oubliées, inventively arranged by Brett Dean. There's a little-known work: the opening one, Fauré's Prelude to Pénélope (a sparsely performed opera, with a slightly less sparsely performed prelude) is a lush and beautifully controlled arc. Controlled and detailed are two words that come to mind for Ticciati's interpretation of La mer, the warhorse work on the program; it may seem a bit deliberate, but there are many hues in his performance. The two Debussy works are balanced by two of Fauré's: the fourth work is the suite from Fauré's incidental music to Pélleas et Mélisande (in Charles Koechlin's version), also deliberate and lush. Linn recorded the performance in Berlin's Jesus Christus Kirche, which allows the full spectrum of orchestral colors to come through. Worth the money for Kozená fans for her turn alone, and a fine French program for all.

A wonderfully and sensitively curated recital of piano music with light and darkness, or night and day as the central theme. Water, fantastical dreams and visions also inhabit the world conjured by Maria Martinova from the music of Debussy, Ravel and the contemporary Swiss composer Gregorio Zanon, who’s two movement work gives this album its title. Martinova’s pianism is by turn dazzling, tender and dramatic as she interprets the vivid sound world of these composers.

Our collection is called “Caprice” in honor of Thierry Lancino’s Cinq Caprices, adapted for flute and piano especially for this recording. The collection is an homage to Pierre Boulez and his life-changing, challenging, ironic, and capricious "Sonatine pour flute et piano", written in 1946. Both Paavali Jumppanen and I had the great good luck to work with Pierre Boulez in our formative years, so when we started to perform together it was obvious that the Sonatine would be a central part of our repertoire and that a recording would follow.