Est 1923

Debussy Piano Works

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Claude Debussy

Label: Harmonia Mundi

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 62

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: HMC90 1601

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(12) Etudes Claude Debussy, Composer
Alain Planès, Piano
Claude Debussy, Composer
D'un cahier d'esquisses (Equisse) Claude Debussy, Composer
Alain Planès, Piano
Claude Debussy, Composer
Masques Claude Debussy, Composer
Alain Planès, Piano
Claude Debussy, Composer
(L') Isle joyeuse Claude Debussy, Composer
Alain Planès, Piano
Claude Debussy, Composer
Debussy’s 12 Etudes are surely the ultimate example of the genre. Chopin’s mastery notwithstanding, no composer has turned the severest problems into such kaleidoscopic fantasy. In the hands of a great pianist or artist every shard or fragment glistens with myriad different lights and colours and it is here, I feel, that Alain Planes, an unfailingly expert guide, reveals his chief limitation. Everything is scrupulously worked but in his chilly search for perfection he forgets the Etudes’ “miraculous quality of pedagogy transcended”. From him, for example, “Pour les degres chromatiques” remains, simply, a study in chromatic scales; nothing less but little more. How one misses Gieseking’s opalescent subtlety or Uchida’s urgent hyperactivity here. Planes is much less inclined to winkle out the music’s innermost secrets, to consider fully their poetic enigma. So while you can admire his true sense of tutta la forza at the end of No. 2 (“Pour les tierces”) or his diamond-like clarity throughout, you will search in vain for more subtle or teasing virtues. No. 6 is Vivement e molto leggiero up to a point, but it is hardly pianissimo or legato. Again, in the central Lento, molto rubato of No. 12 his playing expands into an alien loudness, the mystery exposed, as it were, to broad daylight. Planes’s encores, too, are more precise than evocative (Masques is neither vif nor fantasque).
The recordings are somewhat clinical and it is interesting that the two finest performances (whether ancient or modern) of the Etudes are by Gieseking (German) and Uchida (Japanese). French pianists can hardly be said to reign, automatically supreme, over their own territory.'

Debussy Piano Works

(12) Etudes

D'un cahier d'esquisses (Equisse)

Masques

(L') Isle joyeuse

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