Claude Debussy

Review: International Piano

Claude Debussy
Suite Bergamasque
1. I. Prélude
2. II. Menuet
3. III. Clair de Lune
4. IV. Passepied

5. Première Rhapsodie

6. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (arr. Østerlind / Hyldig)

Cello Sonata in D minor
7. I. Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
8. II. Sérénade: Modérément animé
9. III. Finale: Animé, léger et nerveux

Violin Sonata in G minor
10. I. Allegro vivo
11. II. Intermède: Fantasque et léger
12. III. Finale: Très animé

Claude Debussy ©
The Anglo-American painter James McNeill Whistler urged Claude Debussy to pursue his musical idea of beauté complète – of ‘total beauty’ in sound. The idea was tied to both men’s vision of nature as the most effective instructor of art, because ‘nature is always right.’ In Debussy’s case, that viewpoint nurtured an ability to turn anything into music: dusk, clouds, wind, gardens, animals, the moon, emotional abstractions and even visions that had no rational or earthly dimension whatsoever.
From the 1890s, Debussy embarked upon one of the most significant revolutions in musical history and one that was unusually softly spoken. In Debussy’s eyes, Romanticism was finished:
its harmonic potential had been exhausted by Wagner’s never-resolving circles while its whole aesthetic had been hijacked by bombast. Debussy’s search for an alternative would turn accepted Germanic musical procedures on their head. Harmonic ‘preparation’ and ‘resolution’ were largely ignored, along with ideas about the presentation, development and argumentation
of a theme in a sonata or a symphony.
For Debussy, there would be no goal other than total beauty and the immersive communication of ‘the moment’ – its feeling, colour, atmosphere. Forthright explanation, narrative angst and melodic hierarchy were dismissed along with the other accouterment of the central European symphonic school (Debussy had no qualms about invoking geopolitics as he rang these changes, particularly in the 1910s). In their place came rapidly shifting focal points and ideas that seemed to evaporate or transfigure no sooner than they had appeared. ‘Impressionism’, for all its misleading connotations, was a decent enough label. But Debussy was influenced heavily by the symbolist movement, which had a hand in his groundbreaking tone poem of 1893, Prelude à l’Après-midi d’un faune.
That piece, in a new arrangement by the Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen, forms the culmination of the ensemble’s snapshot of the mature Debussy from the early 1890s to the year before
his death in 1918. ‘We cover the whole span of Debussy’s mature writing,’ says pianist Kristoffer Hyldig, the only member of the quartet who experiences that span in practical terms,playing on this album’s every track. He speaks for the whole group when he describes a desire to interpret the assembled works in terms other than impressionism: ‘we talked about trying to take the music beyond something floaty and impressionistic. There is a lot more to catch in this music – plenty of imagery, symbolism and realism.’

RELEASE DATE: October 2020

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 842

EAN: 5709499842003