BaL 24.03 18 - Debussy: Preludes Book 1

[mikealdren]

This thread prompted me to buy one of the Livia Rev Debussy CDs on Saga and it's very very good. Sadly she died yesterday aged 101. RIP.

[Bergonzi]

Fascinating case study, and good to follow the score in the Nelson Freire version . I may listen again to them all when I can find the score.

[Bryn]

Not quite!

I've been fascinated by reproducing pianos ever since I heard them at the Paul Corin Musical Collection near Liskeard in Cornwall in 1968 (the collection is sadly closed now and all the musical machines have gone to pastures new.) They had about 5 reproducing pianos, and I was just mesmerised by them (the experience of hearing/seeing Rachmaninov's "ghost" playing his C sharp minor prelude is still vivid after all these years.)

The reproducing piano mechanism was derived from that of the pianola - with extra holes in the paper rolls to control things like dynamics and rubato. But it was still limited - it couldn't reproduce all the nuances of a performance. There were at least three different technologies - Duo-Art, Ampico and Welte-Mignon - all with different attempts to address the deficiencies, and all therefore mutually incompatible. Debussy's roll was produced by Welte-Mignon: the process in this case was that the performer played, and the performance created a proto-roll with marks on it. Concurrently, a Welte-Mignon employee would take detailed notes about the performance (principally about parameters which couldn't be recorded on the roll.) Then, a third party would interpret both the proto-roll and the notes, and cut a final paper roll. After testing, this would then be used as the original for the commercial copies.

In this case, is it possible that if Debussy used a lot of rubato, and if the person cutting the final roll didn't know the piece that well, could 3/2s have morphed into 3/4s? I suggest that it's a possibility. I know about Debussy's enthusiasm for the finished product - but the only things which he could compare it with were the older pianola rolls and the earliest phonograph/gramophone recordings (and his comments were in general terms about several rolls.) Whatever - I take the view that the Howat camp's reliance on the Debussy roll is walking on thin ice. After all, which is more authoritative - the printed score or the composer playing from the printed score?

The thing which would really settle the matter would be if there's some kind of Welte-Mignon archive, and if the Debussy original roll is still extant in it. If so, it could be scanned and computer-processed into a guaranteed-accurate reproduction of Debussy's performance. (I am occasionally sorely tempted to follow this path and see where it leads.)

Debussy presumably played the recording instrument using his ten digits. O.k., he will also have used pedalling, but the principal initiators of the recording process were his fingers, hence digital.

[Beresford]

... I was just wondering why Pollini hadn't been mentioned on this thread. I have indeed heard the shortlisted recordings by Bavouzet, Thibaudet and Osborne, and I do find them pretty perfumey, especially Osborne; as I said, I don't find that a problem in itself, but the music somehow affects me more directly through Pollini's more hard-edged approach.

Perfumed is nice on ocassions, as is religous gravity, but usually I too prefer the more hard-edged approach, which I find in Daniel Ericourt's c1960 recordings. He turned pages for Debussy. I would be interested to read your impressions of his interpretations.