Debussy: Préludes - Book 2: No. 10, Canope

Sviatoslav Richter (1915–1997) is acknowledged today as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century along with his great Russian contemporaries, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels and Mstislav Rostropovich.

This rare broadcast recording makes its first appearance on CD.

The June 1967 recital at the Royal Festival Hall very much reflects the pianist’s personal taste, containing the rarely played Haydn and Weber Sonatas together with the Schumann Novelettes with the more popular additions of Chopin and Debussy.

He declared, ‘my principle is to play only works that I really love and not just those that are currently accepted’.

Of all the Haydn Sonatas that Richter played, No.62 featured more frequently in his programmes as did the Weber Sonata No.3, which he regarded in a notebook entry in 1990 as a ‘highly original work and I like it a lot’.

The two Schumann Novelettes were often played in the 1960s though Richter did not perform No.8 for the following two decades. With the Chopin and Debussy, Richter is on familiar territory, which he invests with his characteristic imagination and spontaneity.

Superb Ambient Mastering recreates the atmosphere in the Royal Festival Hall perfectly.

Recorded live at The Granary, Beccles U.K., this recital captures Pascal Rogé in the repertoire that has earned him the reputation as one of the world’s greatest interpreters of Chopin and the French repertoire.

Pascal Rogé is today’s greatest ambassador and stylist in French piano music. Winner of two Gramophone Awards, his name is synonymous over many years with the finest in French piano playing, both in concert and on disc for Decca, and now in Debussy for ONYX

Debussy's twenty-four Preludes, like Chopin's, are surprisingly self-sufficient. Divided into two books, published in 1910 and 1913, the Preludes are an intimate record of Debussy's inner and imaginative life. Their titles were after-thoughts rather than direct inspirations, largely because Debussy's delicate and complex response to natural phenomena or human idiosyncrasy could hardly be contained or expressed by a simple caption or heading.

The Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet isn't readily associated with the music of Debussy, but his selection of sixteen of the composer's Preludes yield performances of refinement and fluidity. Lines are clearly delineated and the myriad of impressions within a single piece are nothing short of kaleidoscopic.

Jorge Bolet made this superbly languid and delicate recording of 16 Préludes by Debussy less than two years before his untimely death in 1990 at the age of 75. The Cuban-born pianist's reputation was largely founded on his mercurial, blockbusting performances and recordings of Rachmaninov and Liszt, but this disc shows a true pianist’s lightness of touch, as well as some superbly sensitive engineering and technical preparation of his beloved Baldwin SD-10 instrument, chosen by Bolet in preference to the far more popular Steinways.

Bolet's own personal fastidiousness – he always recorded in a jacket and tie – is reflected, and in perhaps unexpected and certainly fascinating ways, in this personal selection from the two books of twelve Préludes, and the ordering of them. He may have been a reluctant, and and indeed until the last couple of decades of his life, infrequent visitor to the studio – he once remarked that he would rather give hundreds of concerts than make one recording – but this wariness does not translate itself into metronomical stiffness but rather reflect a refined version of the spontaneity that manifested itself more naturally in his concert playing.

‘Bolet’s performances, with their inimitable beauty of line and shimmering sonority (very much the product of an unobtrusive but subtle virtuoso pedal technique), their poetic freedom within a basic pulse, were like some serene and final distillation of all he had learnt and known, the massive and legendary virtuosity of earlier days directed into an everincreasing concern with more durable musical truths.’ Gramophone, 1991

An exotic collection of classical music which evokes the mysterious world of classical Egypt. These major works have all been chosen for their great tunes, rich harmonies and colourful orchestrations and they bring a far-off world to life in a vibrant and exciting way. Verdi, Debussy, Saint-Säens and others in some of their most colourful and imaginative compositions.

“Rarely have I heard the hostility of the sea evoked as eerily as in [Mark Elder’s] polished account of Debussy’s La Mer”. The Observer, on the Halle’s Prom July ’06.