BaL 25.01.14 - Debussy: Images Books 1 & 2 for Piano

[Nick Armstrong]

Hey Cali, you never did answer the Eastbourne breakfast question.

So ... Full English or continental? Thanks.

The Debussyesque Image would have been entitled:

Les saucisses et les oeufs s'entassaient sur l'assiette... (Lento con molto appetito)

[verismissimo]

... Debussy could be a real twerp.

Never considered him in a Miley Cyrus context before, ferney.

[verismissimo]

... This CD looks interesting in the context of this BaL, in that it has recordings of Images from that era by Ricardo Vines, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Artur Rubinstein. Walter Gieseking, Marcelle Meyer, Marius Francois Gaillard, Claudio Arrau, Jean Doyen and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

http://www.crotchet.co.uk/IM01.html

Thanks for flagging this up, Don. I invested and it turns out to be an absolutely fascinating compilation - it opens with SIX recordings of Reflets dans l'eau, from Paderewski to Michelangeli, none later than 1949. And the transfers seem first rate.

Reading the notes - full of interesting insights - did raise for me a rather substantial concern. The artistic driving force behind the project, Betsy Jolas, mentions that in Reflets Paderewski "takes liberties with the chords, showing an outrageous predilection for arpeggios!" Then of the following version, she says that Gaillard makes "unnecessary accelerandos and ritardandos." And so on. Obviously Jolas has not read Kenneth Hamilton, who has clearly demonstrated that these "faults" were central to the performing tradition before the stick-to-the-score police became dominant. One wonders how many recorded performances were rejected by the "artistic committee" on this basis. And, as a consequence, whether this selection gives a false impression of performance history?