Debussy

Kashkashian, Magen, Piccinini - Tre Voci - Takemitsu, Debussy, Gubaidulina (2014) {ECM New Series 2345}
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© 2014 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2345 / 4810880
Classical / Chamber Music / Flute / Viola / Harp

Kim Kashkashian, who won a Grammy last year with her solo viola Kurtág/Ligeti disc, returns with a new trio. Tre Voci includes Italian-American flutist Marina Piccinini and Israeli harpist Sivan Magen. All three musicians have been acknowledged for bringing a new voice to their instruments. Kashkashian, Piccinini and Magen first played together at the 2010 Marlboro Music Festival, and agreed that the potential of this combination was too great to limit it to a single season.

Of the compilations released to mark the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy's birth this year, this is the most treasurable. As a survey of the music of perhaps of the greatest 20th-century composer it could hardly be bettered, especially within recordings from a single label, or rather, a single group of labels, for as well as Deutsche Grammophon recordings it also includes material from Philips and Decca, which are all now part of the Universal stable.

This collection contains all Debussy’s works for orchestra as well as many orchestral arrangements of his piano music. Together these display a rich panorama of Debussian sound and a remarkable insight into the composer.

Sir Simon Rattle leads an all-star cast in this highly anticipated new recording of Debussy’s evocative opera Pelléas et Mélisande. It was captured in January 2016 during performances of an innovative collaboration between Rattle and Peter Sellars, two of the boldest creative minds in music and theatre today. Supported by the London Symphony Chorus, prepared by renowned choral director Simon Halsey, it is a moving statement of intent for Rattle’s tenure as LSO Music Director.

Debussy's piano music has always been popular, of course, but the variety of good and distinctive recordings of it in the middle and late 2010s must point to some kind of cultural trend. This one by the fine pianist Stephen Hough comes on the heels of a selection by young Seong-Jin Cho, and the two recordings make a fascinating pair, covering much of the same territory. The program diverges with Hough opening with the Estampes, while Cho plays the more proto-neoclassical Suite Bergamasque.

Debussy began composing La Mer in 1904, in Burgundy, but as he wrote to fellow composer André Messager, his memories of the sea were “worth more than a reality whose charm generally weighs too heavily on the imagination”. He continued to work on the score, however, while staying in Jersey, and then in Dieppe. For Debussy, even less than for the Beethoven of the “Pastoral” Symphony, writing about nature does not mean naïvelyimitating it by portraying the elements or the meteorological phenomena that animate them; descriptive music suits neither the flexibility of his music nor his creative temperament. Instead, he invents, he responds to nature through his art, setting up something else in contrast to it.

“…Incidentally, I am more and more convinced that, in essence, music is not something that could be poured into a strict, traditional form. It consists of colors and time expressed in rhythm…” (Claude Debussy, 1907) These words essentially summarize a whole movement- the movement of musical Impressionism. Claude Debussy is responsible for the fact that the newer French piano music of his time came to be highly regarded. After the age of Liszt, he developed in essence a newly independent style of piano music, and gave French Impressionism an exalted position in the field of music. Both of the books of Preludes by Debussy are an expression of this style. The first book was written between 1909 and 1910. The second, between 1910 and 1912. In total there are 24 compositions with which Debussy continued- if only superficially- the tradition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier or Chopin’s 24 Preludes.

Fluid forms, delicately-etched sonorities and subtle harmonies soon established Claude Debussy as one of the immense originals of the 20th century. Deutsche Grammophon commemorates the 100th anniversary of his passing with a new Limited-Edition Set presenting the Complete Published Works, which brings together legendary performances by acclaimed Debussy performers and conductors, several recordings new to CD, and a number of additional historical performances.

On this new release one of Scandinavia’s foremost string quartets, the Swedish Stenhammar Quartet, perform pieces by Claude Debussy, Germaine Tailleferre and Maurice Ravel. The quartet’s previous recordings have been internationally praised by critics, and this new album will certainly be no exception. 'The Stenhammar Quartet produces a clean and vibrant sound, they use a range of well-judged dynamics and the articulation is exceptionally good throughout' MusicWeb International.