Debussy: La plus que lente

This new album by Sergei Nakariakov, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Dahlem, south-west Berlin, in August 2010 by the same team that made most of his Teldec recordings, is dedicated to his late mentor, the great Russian trumpeter, Timofei Dokshizer.

Spectacular virtuoso trumpet works are featured alongside smoother works on the flugel horn.

The music of three nations – Britain, Spain and France – inspired Debussy’s Images for orchestra, which occupied him from 1905 to 1912.

Originally conceived for two pianos (Images I and II for solo piano are on 8.550253), this third set draws on several folk songs in its outer movements, the tripartite middle movement evoking in musical terms Spanish sights, sounds and fragrances.

Vivid orchestrations by both Debussy and Ravel of short piano pieces likewise embrace contrasting moods and national characters.

Volumes 1 (8570759) and 2 (8570993) in this series have been highly praised.

Claude Debussy was an excellent pianist, and Marguerite Long, who worked with him, admired “the suppleness, caress and depth of his touch”, as well as his “full, intense sonority, free of any harshness in the attack, like Chopin”. After the elegant, delicate Arabesques of 1888, in 1901 Debussy published his first important piano work, Pour le piano, in the tradition of the great baroque keyboard masters whom he so admired; it was to his dear daughter Chouchou, born in 1905, that he dedicated the six simple miniatures of Children’s Corner, a blend of emotion, playfulness and humour. “When one can’t afford to travel, one must make do with the imagination,” he said, commenting on the Estampes, whose heady sonorities and magical evocations refer to the Orient, Spain, and the spirit of France; Debussy was also capable of irony, as in La Plus que lente, composed in 1910 as “café music”. Less well-known, the Pièce pour le Vêtement du blessé was composed for a charity during the First World War devoted to dressing the wounds of soldiers. Marguerite Long described L’Isle joyeuse (1904) as an exuberant, “joyful gust of wind” and “a celebration of rhythm”; it is also a superb exploration of tone-colour and nuance.

Debussy and Poulenc made a lasting impact on the musical identity of their country through both their references to the past and their innovations.This programme illustrates their vision of a certain esprit français: moving constantly between irony and emotion, extremely refined, yet at the same time offering an amplified echo of 'light' music - in short, the 'exquisite bad music' the creator of Les Mamelles de Tirésias prided himself on writing. Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud, upcoming interpreters of the young generation in France, have already made several recordings together and frequently programme these works in concert.Their recording of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata was a Gramophone Editor's Choice.

"I got to know the Poulenc sonata, thanks to Alexandre, who I believe (although I haven't yet managed to make him admit it) must have learnt to play this music before he started walking; it just seems to flow from his fingers as if it were second nature." J-G Queyras

Long a soloist with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Jean-Guihen Queyras was profoundly influenced by working with Pierre Boulez. His discography, distinguished by a musical eclecticism, includes works by Haydn (on period instruments) as well as Dvorák and 20th-century composers. He has premiered concertos by Ivan Fedele, Gilbert Amy, Bruno Mantovani and Philippe Schoeller (Wind's Eyes), some of which will be recorded for harmonia mundi in late 2008. Alexandre Tharaud devotes a large part of his activity to chamber music. His recording of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata with Jean-Guihen received unanimous critical acclaim. An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, he premiered Thierry Pécou's cycle Outre-Mémoire, as well as his concerto L'Oiseau innumérable (HMC901974, July 2008). His recital programmes 'Hommages' intersperse harpsichord pieces by Rameau and Couperin played on the piano with tributes by living composers.

Philippe Graffin is the latest violinist to join ONYX, after several outstanding discs of rare French and English repertoire for labels such as Hyperion and Avie. This new recital brings together the mesmerising intensity of Gypsy violin playing with classical composers’ response to it.

Released to coincide with a notable novel called Hungarian Dances by writer and journalist Jessica Duchen. She explains: “When I asked Philippe Graffin, a treasured friend and colleague, to check the manuscript of Hungarian Dances for violinistic errors, I little dreamed he’d respond by making this recording: a CD inspired by the novel. Yet the novel was partly inspired by a CD – Philippe and Claire’s beautiful recital ‘In the Shade of Forests’, [Avie Records, rave reviews worldwide] evoking the spirit of the archetypal wandering Gypsy violinist”.

Philippe’s recital is loosely based around the book but is also designed to work as a programme in its own right with several pieces chosen only for the recording including rarities by such composers as Von Vecsey, Hubay, Scarlatescu and Arthur Hartmann.

Claire Désert is well-known in France for several solo CDs for FNAC and other labels and here plays both piano and piano luthéal, the ‘prepared piano’ that Ravel had made for Tzigane in 1919 and which imitates the sound of a Hungarian cimbalom to striking effect in many of these pieces.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet here offers the third volume in his series devoted to the complete works for piano by Debussy. The music now moves to a more playful strand in Debussy’s compositional career, with generally shorter pieces of the salon genre, including the two famous collections Children’s Corner and Suite bergamasque.

In addition to these well-known works are several that are more rarely heard. Two such are La plus que lente, which seems to look ahead to the Études of 1915, and Élégie. Roger Nichols describes the former as ‘one of his most delightful pieces… the harmonic turns are particularly sophisticated and enchanting’. The Élégie was written in 1915 following the composer’s move to the coast. The outbreak of the First World War had initially depressed Debussy into a state of creative sterility but the move was to prove most productive. The Élégie was written for a charity and, dedicated to Queen Alexandra, honours the role of women in wartime. It is now rarely performed but Roger Nichols writes, ‘it is one of the composer’s most extraordinary works… and we are left wondering what on earth Debussy would have written in the 1920s and beyond’.

Bavouzet’s previous two volumes have been very well received both critically and commercially. In a recent review of volume two the LA Times wrote, ‘In what may turn out to be the greatest complete recorded survey of the composer’s piano music yet, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet… plays with such bracing clarity that hearing the early Romantic pieces, one feels like jumping into an icy pond after an hour in the sauna’. Of the same volume International Record Review has noted, ‘I had the highest praise for Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s first volume of Debussy, and the present disc is fully the equal of that one in terms of colour, refinement of touch, spontaneity and technical finish… Bavouzet has written that his Debussy playing has been influenced by that of Gieseking, Michelangeli and Richter. You may hear something of each of these pianists in his playing but more than that you will hear his own distinctive and special voice’.

This series is a deeply personal project for Bavouzet who has been involved in all aspects of the recording process.