Originally posted by HighlandDougie
View Post
-
It's not a very precise word to use, for which I apologise, and I'm not going to try to defend it, but what I mean is a kind of performance that uses a lot of pedal and emphasises the (for want of a better word) "impressionistic" aspect of the pieces, or at least those where this aspect seems to be implicit (like Cathédrale). In fact I'm interested in piano playing that brings out quasi-orchestral "colours", but, having listened to Osborne more than the others I would say that while he does marvellously in this area, he doesn't approach the music in a way that makes me really take notice. Does that make any more sense? I had this same experience with Pollini's Chopin recordings. -
Yes - I know what you mean, although I’m not sure that the unperfumed Pollini (much as I admire the pianism) captures the originality of Debussy’s writing quite as much as Kocsis or, indeed, Cortot. But, hey, Tomita - now we’re talking.Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
-
HD You're spot on there - I listened to a bit of Debussy over the weekend - Tomita was an essential. Whenever I hear orchestrations of Debussy's piano music - most are OK but maybe a little overdone, Tomita's recordings are I think fairly faithful to the piano notes, although my analytical skills are by no means brilliant, and they just add an additional dimension.Originally posted by HighlandDougie View PostComment
-
Sounds alright on my Bechstein made the year after it was published. Well apart from the playing, of courseOriginally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
Comment
-
Belatedly caught up on this BAL and got a lot out of it. I've known these pieces as long as any (having done book 1 for music 'O'-level - I think it was the then-new Michaelangeli that we listened to, and which I acquired, and which left me slightly cold in many of them)
Probably won't splash out, owning the Bavouzet already. But I learned several things I didn't know - the Cathédrale tempo debate, the Burns connection to La fille, and above all the Albéniz connection to Sérénade... of course! Having recently heard Ibéria live, I knew El Albaicín reminded me of something! *doh*"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
Comment
-
Often quite a cheesy one to be sure! - but nothing is really added to the score as it would be in an orchestration. That record was quite a technical tour de force in its time also. I guess it would have been disdained by more "serious" electronic composers back then, but for me it has retained its interest forty years later better than some of their efforts!Originally posted by cloughie View PostComment
-
I must have got distracted at that point...what was this?Originally posted by Caliban View PostComment
-
Mr Burnside has spoken of this elsewhere, too:Originally posted by silvestrione View Post
... the relevant bit is:
You will look in vain for a French artsong tradition that engages with Robert Burns; they simply weren't interested. But there is
one intriguing carry over, again into the world of solo piano music.
The Girl with Flaxen Hair
Ostensibly the title comes from a poem by the 19thC French poet Leconte de Lisle. Dig a little deeper and you find that Leconte de Lisle was very Scotland-friendly, an admirer of both Burns and Scott, and this girl of his is Burns's Lassie wi'the lint-white locks.
So beautiful is this poem, a shepherd addressing his sweetheart, that I'm amazed it doesn't crop up in the Burns Top 10, but, well, it doesn't. I'm going to read you the end of the poem and then play you the end of the Prelude, so you can see how faithful Debussy is to Burns. It's really a song without words. And that opening tune you just heard - it's not the girl's wavy hair, as has often been suggested, it's the shepherd wistfully blowing his little pipe
When Cynthia lights, wi' silver ray,
The weary shearer's hameward way,
Thro' yellow waving fields we'll stray,
And talk o' love, my Dearie, O.
And when the howling wintry blast
Disturbs my Lassie's midnight rest,
Enclasped to my faithfu' breast,
I'll comfort thee, my Dearie, O.
Lassie wi'the lint-white locks,
Bonie lassie, artless lassie,
Wilt thou wi' me tent the flocks,
Wilt thou be myDearie, O'[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
-
Was Gordon Fergus Thompson mentioned? This week I've dug out a few versions of Book 1, and I have to say I enjoyed his the most. No undue mucking about with tempi, and playing pretty much what you see on the page...but with impeccable control and a sensitive grasp of the mood of each piece.Comment
-
NopeOriginally posted by ardcarp View Post
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
Comment
-
Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
- and real insights and power in his playing, too.
(I think that one of the reasons I never got round to buying the Pollini was the expense of his releases - to get just both books of his Preludes cost more than GF-T's 5CD set of the complete Debussy piano works. I've been waiting for DG to bring out his three full-price Debussy discs as a mid-price twofer.)[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
-
That would have put me off too, given that for me it isn't really central repertoire (though after hearing Pollini it might be). But, I'm bound to say, with a Qobuz subscription I have all three sitting in my Favourites list ready to play in CD quality.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostComment
-
For me you understate the case. When I bought the 7 disc set of GF-T's Debussy and PC's Ravel, that set was lower in price than a either Book 1 or Book 2 played by Pollini. Admittedly that was in an HMV sale in which the Brilliant Classics GR-T/PC set was included but the DG Pollinis were not.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post - and real insights and power in his playing, too.
(I think that one of the reasons I never got round to buying the Pollini was the expense of his releases - to get just both books of his Preludes cost more than GF-T's 5CD set of the complete Debussy piano works. I've been waiting for DG to bring out his three full-price Debussy discs as a mid-price twofer.)Comment
-
Not quite!Originally posted by Bryn View Post
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.)Comment
-
Sorry it's taken me so long to come back about this: other things got in the way, and there's a vast variation in approaches to the piece (so that it's often difficult to tell whether a performer is sticking to Debussy's original, playing Howat's revision, or just using their own interpretation.Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
If you'll bear with me, here's the main point of contention. Debussy's tempo marking is "6/4=3/2". It seems to me (and others) self-evident that this means that a bar of 6 crotchets should take up the same time-interval as a bar of 3 minims. Roy Howat believes that Debussy got it wrong, and where he wrote a bar of 3 minims, it should have been 3 crotchets (so half the length of a 6/4 bar.) Now - this is my view. What's Debussy trying to do? He's trying to convey an impression of a cathedral rising out of the sea. The sound-based elements which he can use for this are bells and choral singing. For most of the time (again, my personal view) it seems that the 6-crotchet bars suggest the bells, and the 3-crotchet bars the choir (singing something between organum and a chorale.) So - if this is not too simplistic a view - they should be different! Playing the minims as crotchets blurs the distinction between the two elements. It also usually means that the "bells" are too slow (pealing cathedral bells just don't sound like that!! The only time that they sound slowly is if they're tolling for a funeral.)
The two points which give the game away as to which approach a performer is following (knowingly or not) are: (1) bars 5-7: bar 5 and 6 are 6-crotchet bars, then 7 is the first of the 3-minim bars. If a player is sticking to Debussy's original, there's a sudden slowing of metre at bar 7 (maybe, the first suggestion of the sound of the choir.) If the performer is following Howat's view of things, there's no change of metre, and the minims in bar 7 are at the same speed as the crotchets in bars 1,3 and 5. (2) Bars 21-22 - the point at which the big build-up of pealing bells (6/4 bars) suddenly jolts into 3/2, leading to the big chorale tune. Again, in Debussy's original, there's a massive change of metre - none in Howat's version.
I've stuck to comparing performances on Youtube, and it's taken me a while to find two which seem to represent the extremes. First, the one which most clearly seems to stick to Debussy's original - and also avoids what I think is the main problem which has led up to the current situation: the tendency to interpret "Profondement calme" as "really slow":
Anastasia Huppmann - haven't heard (or heard of) her before. The fact that she adopts a faster tempo at the start means that the switches between 6-crotchet bars and 3-minim bars are clear, and the 3/2 bars don't sound too slow. (She does tend to speed up a bit in the chorale section.) (BTW, while listening to this, I found it best not to watch the rather silly graphics.)
The most extreme version of the Debussy a la Howat approach that I've heard is Pollini:
There's no distinction between the minims in bar 7 and the crotchets in bars 1,3 and 5, and similarly no change of metre at bar 22. Also - unlike most of even the Howat camp - he keeps the 3/2=3/4 even in the closing bars.
Most pianists (admirably) go their own way and find their own path through the undergrowth. Richter (as might be expected) sticks to Debussy's original -
- but illustrates the problem when the opening is played very slowly: Debussy marks the first 3-minim bar "doux et fluide" - and it just doesn't flow! And as the big chorale tune approaches, there's an almost irresistible urge to speed up.
Arthur Rubinstein appears to take the Howat approach (but the performance isn't dated, so maybe it's just his own interpretation):
Michelangeli sticks mainly to Debussy's original, but allows himself a fair bit of leeway (speeding up in the 3-minim bars and slowing down in the build-up - but the points at which the metre changes are clear. (Brilliant performance! His gradation of the dynamics is just extraordinary.)
Nelson Freire -
- seems to go his own way, but heavily influenced by the Howat approach (the minims in bar 7 still sound to be like the crotchets in bar 1). Note that this performance has the score as the background - so you can see the switches between crotchets and minims.
Robert Casadesus -
- seems to be based on Debussy's original. He adopts a particularly fast tempo at the start, and then speeds up even more in the 3 minim bars. (Live performance and a bit splashy - but I do like it. The ending follows the score particularly clearly - alternating 6-crotchet and 3-minim bars; compare with Pollini, where it's 6-crotchet bars alternating with 3-crotchet bars.
I'll stop there. I hope the above examples do illustrate the issue. Sorry for rabbitting on about it at such length - but I do feel that it's important (it's not just a case of "interpreting" the score differently - it's a case of a musicologist saying that the composer got it wrong (to the point of writing minims when he meant crotchets) and a majority of performers agreeing with him.)Comment
Comment