All recordingsPrices shown exclude VAT. (UK tax is not payable for deliveries to United States.)
See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | | .jpg) | Debussy: Orchestral Works
Recognised internationally as a conductor of the highest calibre, Stéphane Denève took up the post of Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2005, and has since attracted attention from audiences and critics alike. This May, the conductor bids a fond farewell to Scotland and the RSNO with a series of ‘Au Revoir’ concerts, and of course, this disc of orchestral works by Debussy. After the impact made by the production of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, the next orchestral work by Debussy was awaited with intense interest. La Mer did not disappoint, and is today widely considered to have been crucial in its influence on twentieth-century music. After completing this work, Debussy spent no fewer than seven years wrestling with what were to become Images for orchestra. Some critics were puzzled by the work and suggested that Debussy’s talent might have dried out. They were promptly put right in an article by Ravel, who accused them of ‘slowly closing their eyelids before the rising sun amid loud protestations that night is falling’. With a sultry flute solo, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune opened an astonishing new world for western music. Debussy based this composition on a poem by Mallarmé, who wrote to the composer: ‘I have come from the concert, deeply moved: A miracle! that your illustration of L’Après-midi d’un faune should present no dissonance with my text, other than to venture further, truly, into nostalgia and light…’ The three Nocturnes feature some of Debussy’s most imaginative orchestral writing. In the words of the composer, ‘the title Nocturnes is… not meant to designate the usual form of a nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word would suggest’. Debussy provided descriptions of the three movements. ‘Nuages’, for example, depicts ‘the slow, melancholy procession of the clouds, ending in a grey agony tinged with white’, and also the experience of standing ‘on the Pont de Solférino very late at night. Total silence. The Seine without a ripple, like a tarnished mirror’. “his Debussy is his own, muscular yet transparent, colouristic yet atmospheric and mysterious...Even that symphonic warhorse La Mer sounds freshly reimagined by the young Frenchman, whose sense of the music’s ebb and flow, with surging climaxes, is unerring...an ideal way to acquire Debussy’s orchestral masterpieces” Sunday Times, 3rd June 2012 “Denève still summons a sensuous bloom in the Prélude, and thanks to his influence, the RSNO proves better than the French at their own game: these are among the most seductive Debussy performances I have heard in years.” Financial Times, 9th June 2012 **** “Denève has clear ideas about the lucidity of Debussy’s scoring and he conducts the orchestra in a way that brings the poetic or visual pictures that inspired the music vividly and freshly to life...All are performed with finesse and with a combination of energy, discretion and colour that give them a luminous quality.” The Telegraph, 22nd June 2012 *** “Denève shows how precise were [Debussy's] choices of instrumental colour and how well-defined and animated the images he was expressing through his music...There is nothing vague about these performances; rather they convey both the dynamism and the delicacy of the music with understanding and stimulating freshness.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2012 “his meticulous attention to detail is impressive, but what should be a complex, living seascape remains stubbornly one-dimensional...Outwardly brilliant, inwardly dull. Perplexing.” MusicWeb International, August 2012 | | | (also available to download from $21.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy - Complete Works for Solo Piano Volume 3
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. “This third volume confirms Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's winning affinity for Debussy's music. Such familiar pieces as the Suite bergamasque, Deux Arabesques or Children's Corner come across with their colours luminous, their ideas voiced fluently and the moods atmospherically fixed.” The Telegraph, 31st May 2008 “Fiercely energised yet superfine, his performances are not for those with comfortable drawing-room notions of Debussy.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2008 “…this delightful disc places Debussy's two most modest cycles (Children's Corner and Suite bergamasque) within a broadly chronological sequence of pieces spanning the composer's career.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2008 ***** “Volume 3 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's superb Debussy cycle links mostly early miniatures with the Suite bergamasque and Children's Corner.
Once more he turns conventional notions of 'impressionism' topsy-turvy, cleansing Debussy of years of dust and accretion and recreating him in every bar in a sparkling and pristine light.
Fiercely energised yet superfine, his performances are not for those with comfortable drawing- room notions of Debussy, and rarely in my experience has a pianist so faultlessly or precisely achieved his aims.
All sentimentality is erased from the Nocturne's enchanting evanescence and just when he momentarily has you wishing that his formidable directness would melt into something more heart-easing, he makes you gasp at his flawless balance of sense and sensibility. He makes something audaciously epic out of Hommage à Haydn and the startling hesitancy in the opening of 'The Snow is Dancing' is convincing rather than idiosyncratic.
His recital ends on a desolating note with the Berceuse héroïque's phantom battle-cries and bugle-calls memorably evoked. The superbly recorded disc includes his own remarkable essay.
This could well be the finest and most challenging of all Debussy piano cycles.
A greater study in contrast in 'composer and interpreter' would be hard to imagine then between Bavouzet and Pascal Rogéacute;. Where Bavouzet breaks out into blazing Mediterranean sunlight, Rogéacute; (radically enriching his earlier Decca Debussy discs) is happy to withdraw into shadow-land. Time and again his playing suggests emotion recollected in tranquillity rather than turmoil; and in, say, 'Hommage à Rameau' or the Sarabande from Pour le piano he discovers the mysterious, still centre of Debussy's art.
'Poissons d'or' is a marvellous distillation of indolence and flashing disruption, and 'Mouvement' is a perky and vivacious rejoinder to all former introspection. And so too is the Toccata, played with unerring ease and grace, and with many ear-catching details.
To summarise, the ever-elusive truth lies somewhere between Rogéacute; the dreamer, Bavouzet the sinewy but always musical athlete, Thibaudet, the teasing wit and sophisticate and, of course, the legendary Gieseking. You pays your money and you takes your choice…” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “Debussy playing does not come any better than this” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy - Complete Piano Works Volume 3
“Where Bavouzet breaks out into blazing Mediterranean sunlight, Rogé is happy to withdraw into shadow-land. Time and again his playing suggests emotion recollected in tranquillity rather than turmoil;… "Poissons d'or" is a marvellous distillation of indolence and flashing disruption.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2008 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy - Orchestral Works 1
“for sheer value for money it is hard to beat Martinon's excellent survey from the 1970s, both for its overall quality and its comprehensiveness. Martinon's is a very good Images, beautifully played, with the orchestral detail vivid and glowing. Jeux is also very fine.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy - Orchestral Works
| | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol.2
“Jean-Yves Thibaudet's Debussy cycle is a cornucopia of delights. The 12 Etudes could hardly be presented more personally or vivaciously. Nos 6 and 7 are marvels of bright-eyed irony and humour, while Nos 8 and 9 contrast a haunting alternation of lassitude and hyperactivity with razor-sharp cascades of repeated notes. His timing in the central lento, molto rubato of No 12 is memorably acute; throughout, you're aware of a pianist with a penchant for spare pedalling and a refined brilliance, far remote from, say, Gieseking's celebrated, opalescent magic. He takes a brisk hand to the Children's Corner suite (allegro rather than allegretto in 'Serenade for the Doll', hardly modérément animé in 'The Snow is Dancing') but even here his spruce technique and vitality are never less than enlivening. In the Suitebergamasque he dances the 'Menuet' with an unusual sense of its underlying grace and gravity, and his 'Clair de lune' is exceptionally silvery and transparent. Both books of Images are given with a rare sense of epiphany or illumination, of flashing fins and sunlight in 'Poissons d'or' and of a timeless sense of archaism in 'Hommage à Rameau'.
Decca's presentation and sound are, respectively, lavish and natural. If you want to hear Debussy new-minted, with air-spun and scintillating textures, Thibaudet is your man.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  |
Also available as part of the Debussy - The Piano Works box set, ALC4002. | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy: Works for Piano
| | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Debussy: Complete Piano Works, Vol. 5
| 
| |
|
| |  | Debussy: Complete Préludes
Lyubimov was the first Soviet pianist to record these works | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
|
|
| |
|
.jpg)
Gramophone Magazine
BBC Music Magazine Awards 2009