Debussy

With two critically-lauded releases on Navona Records (NOTTURNO, performing works by Chopin, and a four-CD box set, BEETHOVEN – 8 CONCERTI) pianist Eliane Rodrigues returns with REFLETS showcasing the pianist’s nuanced and thoughtful performances of fifteen works by Claude Debussy.

The String Quartet in G minor of Claude Debussy and the String Quartet in F major of Maurice Ravel are frequently paired because of their formal similarities, their shared fin de siècle melancholy, and comparable technical demands, and they have been treated as companion pieces on numerous albums. Debussy composed his string quartet in 1893, and Ravel structured his work along similar lines, finishing it in 1903, so in spite of the decade that passed between the works, there was a conscious connection that was reinforced by the composers' mutual admiration.

I reviewed this recording a decade ago ( Fanfare 26:1) when it was issued on Chandos 9980. As that album is still available, I’m left wondering why Melodiya, a label with only moderate distribution, would want to go up with a rerelease of something already in Chandos’s active catalog. Sonically, there’s next to nothing to choose between them. The Chandos is reproduced at a slightly higher volume in the Debussy, but otherwise there isn’t any significant difference. The Ravel still suffers from miking that’s a touch too distant, an issue corrected in the Debussy. Pricewise, they are competitive.

The fifth album of Philzuid features works by Béla Bartók, Anders Hillborg and Claude Debussy. Chief conductor Duncan Ward takes you on a journey filled with innovative sounds and with folk music. Bartók developed his own tonal language through elements taken from folk music whilst Anders Hillborg’s surprising tonal language shows the influence of Scandinavian folk music and of Klezmer. Claude Debussy, however, turned Romantic tonality on its head with harmonies and melodies that owed part of their development to Javanese gamelan music.

Im Nachgang des 100. Geburtstags von Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli veröffentlicht Deutsche Grammophon einen Meilenstein seines Katalogs: die Aufnahmen der Debussy-Zyklen Images, Préludes und Children’s Corner wurden bereits von Zeitgenossen als überragend empfunden und haben auch heute nichts von ihrer Faszination eingebüßt. Michelangelis Debussy sei “die stärkste, farbigste, musikalisch und poetisch beste Debussy-Interpretation, die ein Pianist hervorgebracht hat” (Gramophone).

French pianist Monique Haas recorded the piano works of Debussy and Ravel twice, once in the late '50s and early '60s for Deutsche Grammophon and again in the late '60s and early '70s for Erato. The later recordings are released here in this six disc set from Warner Classics. As on the earlier set, Haas' performances are elegantly stylish, technically impeccable, consummately musical, and quintessentially French. Pick any piece by either composer at random, and you'll see. Try her bright but sensual Suite Bergamasque with its ravishing Clair de lune or her brilliant and visionary Études with their astounding concluding Pour les accords. Or try her recklessly virtuosic Gaspard de la nuit with its frightening Scarbo or her sweetly swaying Valses nobles et sentimentales with its heartrending Épilogue. There are only two meaningful differences between Haas' recordings: in the earlier performance, she is more passionate and impetuous while in the later performances she is more measured and thoughtful.

Mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and pianist Fazıl Say share some tantalising, captivating and sensuous Secrets in this album of songs, centred on Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Fazıl Say’s own Gezi Park 3 – which he and Crebassa premiered in 2014. Describing the recording sessions, Marianne Crebassa says: “Sometimes we worked in a kind of trance … there were some moments when nothing seemed to exist around us …”

Duos don’t always have the temperament for the smouldering fires of Franck as well as the sudden whims of Debussy. Dumay and Pires join the select few. They take their time to find Debussy’s opening pulse, but they establish an individual, thoughtful freedom that ‘speaks’ sensuously and assertively. In the finale, they let unexpected passion grow from the central waltz, setting up a brilliant final flourish. Implicit in the initial, floated phrases of the Franck is a sense of the arduous journey to come. Intensity surges up by degrees towards the soul-torturing struggles at the sonata’s centre, and recedes before a gradual return of serenity and confidence.