Debussy: Piano Music Volume 3

2010

“Volume 3 of Noriko Ogawa's highly praised Debussy cycle includes a superlative performance of La boîte à joujoux that's worth the price of the disc alone. Here, the wildest selection of characters, folk tunes and operas – whether gentle or uncouth, charmers or roustabouts – twirl and tapdance their way through an intricate variety of steps clearly inspired by Stravinsky's Petrushka.
Ogawa responds to every fleeting whimsicality with such clarity and refinement that you are lost in wonder and almost forget that the piano version finally outstays its welcome.
On more authentic pianistic ground, Ogawa wears her sense of Debussian mystery lightly, taking a sometimes disappointingly open-ended view of some of the composer's most poignant and interior thoughts. Scrupulously modern in her approach, she scorns all sentimental evasion but, while she's never less than musicianly, one would have liked a greater awareness of elegy in the Berceuse héroïque, and, in the Préludes, more of the whirring evanescence and less of the superficially abstract, étude-like character in 'Les tierces alternées'.
'Brouillards' and 'Canope' are other coolly perceived evocations and Ogawa is surely happier when not confined by so many pianissimo demands. 'Feux d'artifice' and 'La puerto del vino' are outstanding examples of her virtuosity at its most superfine and characterful.
These, then, are masterly performances even when they hardly sound like music composed 'for an instrument without hammers'. The sound, like the playing, is close, bright and intense.”

February 2006

*****

“…it is Ogawa's performance of the second book of Preludes that grabs the headlines, for she has both the range of colour and the emotional flexibility to bring the Preludes alive. It takes a remarkably multi-faceted pianist to capture the diversity of moods so successfully... Ogawa seriously challenges Krystian Zimerman's hegemony of the Preludes amongst modern accounts.”

Andrew McGregor

14th February 2006

“...we can marvel again at how completely she and Debussy transcend the percussive limitations of the piano without ever romanticising or sentimentalising these miniature masterpieces.”

February 2006

“…a superlative performance of La boîte à joujoux ('Ballet pour enfants')… Ogawa responds to every fleeting whimsicality with such clarity and refinement that you are lost in wonder and almost forget that the piano version finally outstays its welcome. Feux d'artifice and La Puerto del Vino are outstanding examples of her virtuosity at its most superfine and characterful.”