Debussy Jazz

David Grimal and Georges Pludermacher’s sonata recital for Ambroisie begins auspiciously with a reading of Debussy’s Sonata that casts shadows without obscuring detail. Grimal’s hazy timbres, on the 1710 ex-Roederer Stradivari, pervade the first movement, but he achieves laser-like clarity in the upper registers, especially near the end. In the second movement, violinist and pianist alternate playfulness with throaty protestations of poignant yearning. Beside this performance, David Oistrakh’s sounds downright monochromatic. The duo slithers almost menacingly through the finale’s sultry passages. Throughout, Pludermacher reveals himself as a strong-minded exponent of Debussy in his own right…

Henri Dutilleux's work has been gaining attention through a number of significant recent recordings. Esa-Pekka Salonen recorded his Correspondances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Ludovic Morlot has recorded both his symphonies, as well as other works, as the new conductor of the Seattle Symphony. This opportunity to experience and appraise his work casts him as among the most significant French composers of the late twentieth century.

The Seduction of Claude Debussy is a 1999 concept album by Art of Noise, featuring a line-up of Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley, Paul Morley, and Lol Creme. Also appearing on the album are John Hurt, soprano Sally Bradshaw, Rakim, and Donna Lewis. The group blended the music of French impressionist composer Claude Debussy with drum and bass, opera, hip hop, jazz, and narration, and described the album as "the soundtrack to a film that wasn't made about the life of Claude Debussy.

The saxophone, especially the alto saxophone, is not necessarily a very busy instrument in the symphony orchestra. However, in addition to its formative tracks in jazz, in quite a few cases it has also left sound traces in the field of so-called "classical music" that are worth listening to. These traces are followed by the CD "Gravity Groove" by the Finnish saxophonist Joonatan Rautiola. In addition to an interesting arrangement detour to Mozart's "Kegelstatt Trio", it also brings to life impressionistic or neo-classical gems such as Claude Debussy's Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Paule Maurice's Tableaux de Provence. With Charles Wuorinen's Divertimento and the title sonata by Tuomas Turriago, "Gravity Groove", Rautiola enters contemporary sound spheres with virtuosity and tonal refinement.

Debussy modified the inertias of music without altering the thread of music history; he changed the course without losing north, and avoided the pitfalls that led so many other eminent composers of his era to isolation and melancholy. All this is manifested in the works that Peruvian pianist Claudio Constantini reveals to us in this stunning release, second in a series that presents the recording of the complete piano output of the French composer, in which he performs the 24 Preludes, composed by Debussy in two volumes, the first from 1909 to 1910, while he was already ill with the cancer which would cause his death in 1918, and the second from 1911 to 1913. Together with the first book of Preludes, Claudio Constantini performs the Estampes from 1903 and the Ballade Slave from 1890; and next to the second book of Preludes, his Images oubliées from 1894.