Debussy: Estampe No. 3 - Jardins sous la pluie

An audiophile recording of some of Debussy’s favourite piano pieces plus rare and unusual works by admirers of his musical idiom. Carlo Grante is one of today’s most active and popular recording pianists and his concert repertoire is one of the largest among contemporary pianists.

Pianist Jeremy Eskenazi is a true rising star with a glittering career already. His first CD for Divine Art features music relating to water - from the gentle (Debussy) to the ferocious (Beethoven), with works by Chopin and Liszt, and several new pieces by leading British-Australian composer Alicia Grant.

Grant is known for her specially commissioned work, ANZAC Anthem, for choir and organ, which was premiered by the Choir of Westminster Abbey in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in 2005. This anthem continues to be regularly performed at Westminster Abbey and other memorial services that mark Australia and New Zealand’s national day of remembrance.

Born in Paris in 1978, French-British pianist Jeremy Eskenazi is regularly invited to give concerts, seminars, workshops and lecture-recitals around the world. The holder of a PhD in Performance Practice from the Royal Academy of Music (University of London), he has performed in many venues, such as the Festival Chopin in Paris, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, and the Istanbul Opera House.

In recent years York Bowen, the composer, has enjoyed a spectacular revival, but until now his talents as pianist (barring a late recording of his own music for Lyrita) have not been heard since the days of 78s. At the height of his success, in the first decades of the 20th century, Bowen was as much known as pianist as composer and frequently performed at the Proms amongst other things. His first recording, a very rare disc on the Marathon label, was released in 1915, but the bulk of his work was done for Vocalion; after they went bankrupt in 1927 he appears to have made no further 78s. Pride of place must go to Bowen’s Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto. This was the very first recording of the work and its neglect has been due to the fact that it was one of the last recordings to be made under the old acoustic process which was superseded the year the work was issued. Bowen’s pianism is extremely fluent and he plays his own cadenzas! Through all the featured works we hear a pianist who plays in the ‘grand manner’ and that, and his preference for romantic repertoire, reveal him as somewhat atypical of the English pianist of his time. Perhaps his nickname ‘the English Rachmaninov’ did indeed hit the nail on the head.