Debussy: La Mer

Debussy’s music is pantheism translated into sound. He transformed water, clouds, fog, light, dusk, landscapes, the moon, wind, scents, the seasons and gardens, into melody and rhythm. In the process of seeking this artistic “truth”, he managed to completely redefine the art of music.

Master conductor Sylvain Cambreling is the ideal champion for these beloved scores, bringing an expansiveness and clarity seldom encountered in other recordings.

EMI Classics is pleased to release the 10th annual 3CD set of highlights from the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, “the delightful festival where youth meets experience and both benefit” (Gramophone). The Times described Argerich’s Lugano Festival as “community music-making on a deluxe scale, with performers and listeners mutually uplifted by music’s wonders”. The set is being released in anticipation of the Festival’s 2013 season.

Reviewing the 2011 Live from Lugano release, Nicholas Kenyon wrote in The Observer, “There are not many reliable annual treats among classical CDs these days, but the series of live recordings from Martha Argerich's Lugano festival are now a highlight of each year.” Andrew Clark in the Financial Times wrote, “Every June [Argerich] and a clutch of friends and protégés make music in a style that reflects her free spirit and total dedication. Even when Argerich is not playing, she seems to inspire the performance.”

In addition to Argerich, the performers in 2012 included many familiar names from previous Live from Lugano releases, among them the violinist and cellist brothers Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and pianist Nicholas Angelich, all of whom record for Virgin Classics. The current set also welcomes back Mischa Maisky, Lilya Zilberstein, Polina Leschenko, Dora Schwarzberg, Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, Lyda Chen, Ilya Gringolts, Georgio Tomassi, Carlo Maria Griguoli and Alessandro Stella. Newcomers include the pianists Maria João Pires and Nelson Goerner.

The repertoire of Martha Argerich and Friends – Live from Lugano 2012 puts the piano at the centre of the programming, focusing particularly on piano duets and rarely performed and recorded compositions. There is a group from the Austro-German Classical and Romantic tradition, followed by works from Slavic composers, sounds from Italy and France and, as a send-off, a two piano arrangement of an Argentinean tango. The performance of Mahler’s Piano Quartet is something of a family affair, performed by Ms Argerich’s longest-standing artistic collaborator Mischa Maisky, his pianist daughter Lily and violinist son Sascha and Ms Argerich’s daughter Lyda Chen. The orchestral work in this year’s set is Mozart’s Concerto K503 with Argerich and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk.

Martha Argerich’s passion, technical virtuosity, temperament, commitment and supreme artistry have illuminated the music world and left audiences spellbound since she won the 1964 International Chopin Competition. Reluctant to perform solo for many years, she has continued to perform chamber music and concertos with orchestra where, in her own words, “I feel the musicians moving about. I watch them and I also move. I’m more natural.”

EMI Classics marked the occasion of Martha Argerich’s 70th birthday in 2011 with the release of four multi-disc sets bearing some of her finest performances from 1965 to 2009.

Few artists have nurtured and promoted emerging young musicians with the level of personal commitment shown by Martha Argerich. In the process, she has created inspired chamber music partnerships mixing established and up-and-coming artists. After setting up Meeting Point at Beppu, Japan in 1996 and the Martha Argerich Festival in Buenos Aires in 1999, the pianist decided to create a similar gathering of musical minds in Europe. The southern Swiss town of Lugano was identified as an ideal setting for a project based on the spirit of building a community of close-knit relationships among young and established artists and the Progetto Martha Argerich was launched in 2002. More than a decade later, the Festival continues to retain its original experimental ‘feel’ because of the original programming and the emergence of new performing talents. Geoffrey Norris in The Daily Telegraph wrote, “It is always instructive to see who has been invited to perform at the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, because the cast list is a reliable guide to some of the most exciting talent in the musical world today.”

The twelfth season of the Martha Argerich Project will take place from 9 June to 3 July 2013 and will include performances by many of the artists on this set.

EMI would like to dedicate these recordings to the memory of Jurg ‘Abdul’ Grand, who founded the Martha Argerich Project at the 2002 Festival and co-directed the 2002 and 2003 events.

“Everything Martha Argerich touches turns to gold, not only her own piano playing but those around her whom she evidently inspires to new heights.” (The Observer)

“These discs are a reminder of a unique, ever-formidable and enchanting artist.” (Gramophone)

If it is true that the end of Romanticism coincided with the invention of electric light, then we can date this to 1880 -- the year in which Thomas Alva Edison patented the light bulb. At around this time, a brilliant student at the Paris Conservatoire, Claude Debussy, decided to embark upon a composing career that would soon 'illuminate' the history of music.

Debussy's output is roughly divided into three periods, each of which is represented by one of the three discs in this set. Focusing solely on his works for piano duo, the collection effectively represents a vantage point from which to analyse his stylistic development, since it touches on both Debussy's piano and orchestral writing simultaneously: as well as original keyboard works (Lindaraja is one example, the composer's first work inspired by Spain), there are piano pieces arranged for orchestra, vice-versa compositions (Prélude a l'après-midi d'un faune, for instance) and music that was clearly intended for the orchestra or for specific ensembles (one example is Le triomphe de Bacchus, for which the orchestration was never completed).

Performing these works are two of Italy's most celebrated pianists, Massimiliano Damerini and Marco Rapetti. Their accomplished readings highlight the unique relationship that exists between piano and orchestra -- the former can be seen as a monochromatic version of the latter, with the latter essentially describing the former in polychromatic terms -- and, at the same time, draw the listener's attention towards an important area of 19th-century music-making: namely piano transcriptions' vital role in making operatic and symphonic repertoire available to all.

Other information:

- The only really complete edition of Debussy's output for piano duo! Recorded in 2012, Carrara, Italy.

- This set not only contains the original works for piano 4-hands or 2 pianos (such as Petite Suite, En blanc et noir) but also the composer's transcriptions of orchestral works (such as the famous Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun, La Mer). Several pieces receive their CD premiere in this set (the Symphony).

- Debussy, a skilled pianist himself, never made a dry piano reduction of his orchestral works, but took pains to create pianistic masterworks, able to stand on its own.

- Two of Italy's best pianists join forces in this beautiful and inspired performance of Debussy's output for piano duo: Massimiliano Damerini and Marco Rapetti.

- Includes comprehensive booklet notes and artist biographies.

The 'Debussy, Music and the Arts' exhibition, organised by Paris's Musée d’Orsay, proposes to evoke the musician's major encounters with contemporary artists and poets. Paintings, drawings and pastels, along with first editions of Mallarmé, Gide, and Louÿs will recall the musician's admirations and friendships. His music will be present in major autograph scores, rare editions, and projects of sets and costumes for Pelléas, the ballets on the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Jeux, and The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This choice of historic recordings proposed by Jean-Michel Nectoux, curator of this exhibition, will allow for listening to the conductors, pianists – including Debussy himself – and singers who were his first interpreters, such as Ninon Vallin, Jane Bathori, Claire Croiza, Mary Garden and Hector Dufranne, the latter two the Mélisande and Golaud in the Pelléas of 1902, Ricardo Viñes, Camille Chevillard or Toscanini…

This exceptional document allows us to enter the composer's musical intimacy. A real treasure trove!

Many of the legendary opera performances and concerts that George Szell conducted in Salzburg are documented on the ORFEO label.To these, we now add two live recordings of concerts dating from 1957. In the first he is heard with the Berlin Philharmonic, which the Festival's new artistic director, Herbert von Karajan, had just introduced to Salzburg as its second great symphony orchestra alongside the Vienna Philharmonic. Szell had first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic four decades earlier in Berlin. In 1957 he was originally scheduled to give only one concert with the orchestra at the Mozarteum: an all-Mozart programme comprising the relatively little-known Symphony K201, the Piano Concerto in C major, with the then 29-year-old Leon Fleisher making his Salzburg Festival début. His precocious mellowness ideally blends with the Mozart style of Szell and the Berlin Philh. Barely a week later Szell was asked to step in at the last minute and rescue a concert in the old Festspielhaus. He conducted the concert without rehearsal from memory, reversing the planned order of pieces, ending the concert with an acclaimed performance of the'Eroica'.Yet Szell never gives the impression that in spontaneously taking over the concert he had limited himself to only the most basic essentials or that he had taken too great a risk by insisting on his own personal interpretation.Thanks to his precision and perfection the present archive recording affords further proof of George Szell's exceptional status among the leading conductors of the 20th century.

To mark Libor Pešek’s eightieth birthday, Supraphon presents a representative selection of large orchestral recordings he made from 1981 to 1989. Compositions by Josef Suk, who has occupied a privileged position in Pešek’s career, are featured alongside paramount Impressionist pieces – Debussy’s La mer and Ravel’s Suites from the ballet Daphnis et Chloé. Pešek’s recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and Suk’s lesser-known suite Under the Apple Tree are being released on CD for the very first time.

The album also includes recordings of two concertos – Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with Michaela Fukačová, and Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, with Garrick Ohlsson. Within the illustrious career of Libor Pešek, a great and groundbreaking figure among Czech conductors, the period documented on this CD represents one of his peaks, the time of his most intensive collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, preceding his assuming the post of music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. These digitally remastered recordings bear witness to Pešek’s remarkably nuanced work with the orchestral sound and sense for the great lines of Romantic orchestral scores. A living portrait of a major Czech conductor.

By the autumn of 1934 terms were agreed for Toscanini to conduct four broadcast concerts during the third London Music Festival in June 1935, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1930, trained by Adrian Boult, and widely recognized as Britainís foremost ensemble.

Previous guest conductors included Richard Strauss, Mengelberg, and Koussevitzky; Toscanini's son-in-law Vladimir Horowitz had been a soloist with the orchestra and his positive experience had no doubt contributed to the Maestro’s decision to accept the invitation.

After the first, long sold-out concert on June 3, the following day’s critics were unanimous in declaring Toscanini to be pre-eminent in his art.

There were four programs, each given twice (with slight changes), and all recorded ‘on spec’ by HMV; eventually all works (except a Geminiani concerto, issued here for the first time) were released on LP or CD, but have been unavailable for many years, and are now released in greatly improved sound.