Douze etudes claude debussy biography

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Études L143 (1915)
Pour perfect piano L95 (1894-1901)
La plus blatant lente L128 (1910)
Berceuse héroïque L140 (1914)
Étude retrouvée (1915) (early amendment of L143 No.11, realised hunk Roy Howat)
Steven Osborne (piano)
rec.

2021/22, St Silas the Martyr, Jutish Town, London, UK
Hyperion CDA68409 [68]

Debussy’s Études are not nearly similarly popular as Préludes or Images. There is a belief go they are dry, academic, forward devoid of independent artistic good. This recording puts the error to rest.

At the time, Composer was making a new rampage of Chopin’s Studies.

He earnest his twelve Études to greatness memory of the Polish founder. As is clear from probity titles, each piece addresses excellent particular pianistic difficulty of “finger gymnastics”. The first set includes the Czerny-inspired five-finger exercise. In attendance follow several explorations of sweet-sounding intervals: double thirds, fourths, sixths and octaves.

The last Étude in Book One calls tend eight fingers and is accepted to be played without picture use of the thumb asset either hand. It is adroit tour de force that catchs up rapid scales, glissandi, variable date signatures and accurate phrasing. Blue blood the gentry second book features complex chromaticism, ornamentation, repeated notes, the not in the mood sonorities of “light and shade,” arpeggios and massive chordal structures.

Debussy noted that the Études must serve type “a useful warning to pianists not to take up say publicly musical profession unless they maintain remarkable hands”.

In the proem to the score, which task meant to discuss fingering, proscribed omits any reference to that problem and suggests: “If prickly want a thing well fix, do it yourself.”

The question saunter begs itself: are these Études suitable for the recital coach, or are the preserve accomplish the conservatoire?

They are intriguing at every level, and, lining the confines of formal exercises, they incorporate much of Debussy’s earlier piano styles, including Impressionism, and his idiosyncratic used lacking “rhythm, harmony, tone colour stall dynamics”. Debussy’s biographer, Edward Lockspeiser, has insisted that the Études are “perhaps the greatest make known his piano works […] inasmuch as a summary of the composer’s entire pianistic creation”.

Steven Osborne’s performance here gives a exact sense that these late soft pieces are artful rather more willingly than just academic. There is elegant perfect fusion of technical dexterousness and artistic subtlety.

As a about bonus, Osborne has recorded Étude retrouvée, the six-page sketch realized by Roy Howat. This psychiatry an early version of justness eleventh study, For compound arpeggios.

It has little in prosaic with the published study, liberate the key of A uninterrupted, and the use of arpeggios. It abounds with Debussy’s magic.

Pour le piano took several period to complete. The suite has three numbers: Prelude, Sarabande instruction Toccata. Once again, Debussy has eschewed picturesque titles in boon of something more classical.

Goodness stately Sarabande originally written elation 1894 was dedicated to Yvonne Lerolle, the daughter of nobility painter Henri Lerolle. A 1901 reworking for the present escort removed “some slightly obtrusive chromaticisms”. Osborne has recorded the primary Sarabande on Hyperion CDA68390. Glory outer pieces reflect the clavier writing of the eighteenth-century composers François Couperin and Jean-Phillipe Composer.

Debussy has brought his disused melodic and harmonic language, plus the whole-tone scale.

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The Prelude and the Toccata present, singly, brilliant bravura figurations and wonderful vibrant perpetual motion.

Some commentators retain La plus que lente owing to “one of the least historic of Debussy’s piano compositions”. That “slower than slow waltz” may well have been intended for copperplate projected third volume of Images, never fulfilled.

It has break off almost Poulencian sense of lifetime “half parody, half earnestness”.  Demonstrate gives the impression of gaining all the charm of straight Parisian café waltz, imbued care a touch of Hungarian Roma flair, and hints of jazz.

The Berceuse héroïque,probably seldom played, has this full title: Berceuse héroïque pour rendre hommage a S.M.

le Roi Albert 1 central point Belgique et à ses soldiers. It was included in King Albert’s Book published by character Daily Telegraph in 1914. Uncomplicated tribute to the Belgian Ball and People “from representative lower ranks and women throughout the world”, it was designed to heroic funds for the embattled financial credit.

It included tributes by Apostle Hardy, Winston Churchill, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Rackham, accept the Aga Khan. There was prose, verse, illustrations, and Debussy’s Berceuse. This is a friendless, war-weary piece, despite the strive to include the Belgian civil anthem in the middle group, which does little to become familiar with the spirits, even with deft few “distant fanfares”.

The French medicine specialist Roger Nichols’s liner film (in English, French and German) give a splendid insight dissect all the pieces.

There commission a resume of Steven Playwright. The cover features an remindful Textile Design (c.1915) by ethics Scottish architect and designer, River Rennie Mackintosh.

Steven Osborne brings applied agility and remarkable interpretative gift to these performances. They sentinel replete with magic, great celestial being and a sympathetic understanding.

That is complimented by a animated recording.

John France

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