Composer: Claude Achille Debussy
Performer: Maurizio Pollini, Daniele Pollini
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalogue: 4798490
Release: 2018
Size: 788 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Préludes – Book II, L. 123
01. I. Brouillards
02. II. Feuilles mortes
03. III. La puerta del vino
04. IV. Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses
05. V. Bruyères
06. VI. General Lavine – eccentric
07. VII. La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune
08. VIII. Ondine
09. IX. Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq., P.P.M.P.C.
10. X. Canope
11. XI. Les tierces alternées
12. XII. Feux d’artifice
En blanc et noir, L. 134
13. I. Avec emportement
14. II. Lent. Sombre
15. III. Scherzando
Why yes indeed, this is a very recent recording of Debussy by Maurizio Pollini (with his own son Daniele at his side for En blanc et en noir), made in late 2016 in Munich’s sumptuous Herkulesaal. In it, the old lion of the piano unfurls for us the sumptuous and enigmatic musical tapestry of the Second Book of Debussy’s Preludes, finished in 1912: a superlatively delicate pattern, more sketched and suggested than really followed, the pianist being enjoined not to “overdo it”. Maurizio Pollini, 74 when the recording was made, can measure his performance out perfectly, and knows how to give the impression that the music is being written and improvised as he plays. And the album closes with En blanc et en noir for two pianos, of which Debussy wrote in 1915: “I have suffered greatly from the long drought imposed upon my brain by the war”; after months of silence, and his work editing Chopin, he entered a period of fevered creativity which continued with the two Books of the Études and the final sonatas. First entitled “Caprices en blanc et noir”, the three pieces of En blanc et noir refer neatly to the instrument’s keys and, as Debussy writes in 1916, “they aim to draw their colour, their emotion, from the simple piano, like Velasquez’s greys”. Grey, the fruit of the meeting of black and white…