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In Reply to: RE: Warner Releases Gieseking's Debussy. Does it still hold up? posted by jdaniel@jps.net on November 06, 2020 at 18:33:59
Michelangeli's. Very different, but I enjoy them both, as well as Gieseking.
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. . . to Arrau's musical and pianistic approach, and Philips captured some beautiful tone quality in those recordings. Overall, I'm not generally impressed with Arrau, but, in the right repertoire (Debussy, Chopin Nocturnes), he certainly had his moments.
Debby have marvelous engineering--- and his tone, shading, and tempi are much to my liking.
Chris, I saw an Arrau concert from near the end of his performing career. The only thing I found memorable was the two Debussy encores--don't recall which pieces, though.
The first time was in LA in the late 60's, where he appeared with Mehta (or was it Gerhard Samuel?) and the LAPO in the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Weber Konzertstuck. Then I saw a couple of his recitals in the 80's in SF. I frequently found his playing somewhat effortful (no so good for composers like Liszt IMHO!), but he had written the program notes for his set of Beethoven Sonatas where he declared that Beethoven's sense of striving for unknown, ethereal heights in music should be matched by the listener's perception of the performer's sense of struggle to attain those heights. This idea sounded convincing to me at the time, but, as I heard still more performances of these works by other pianists over the years, Arrau's claim seemed more an excuse for his own shortcomings than a special insight on the music. But to this day, I'm still impressed by his poetic description of the trills in the late Beethoven Sonatas as "the flutterings of the soul"! Somebody who writes like that should be respected, but I just wish he played better in a technical sense.
One funny thing about that performance of the Liszt Second Piano Concerto was, after his long cello solo in that work, the LAPO's principal cellist at that time turned to his co-principal (stand partner) and then very noticeably shrugged his shoulders as the performance was still continuing - as if to say, "that's the way it went, and I guess it's not going to get any better!". (BTW, it had sounded fine to me - LOL!)
Philips put out a series of box sets with Arrau covering various composers. His Debussy is superb. He plays the structure and various levels really well (Debussy scored some of his piano music with 3 staffs instead of the usual 2). He also does beautifully with the more atmospheric pieces such as the middle movements in both books of the Images.
Gieseking's Debussy is interesting in that he uses pedal sparingly. It works, it just requires a different touch for the piano. The mists and illuminated fogs of Debussy's writing are not quite as palpable, but there is a crystalline clarity to the playing and notes.
Other great performers for Debussy (not in any particular order): Tamas Vasary, Monique Haas, Krystian Zimerman, Robert Casadesus, and Pascal Rogé.
More recently, Víkingur Ólafsson put out an album of Debussy and Rameau. I would love to hear him record an all Debussy album. Pollini also recently recorded the Debussy Preludes. It is great to hear Pollini in this repertoire.
Marc-Andre Hamelin and Angela Hewitt have both recorded Debussy albums for Hyperion. They each have their own approach and add their own imprint to the music. It is well served in their hands.
Seong-Jin Cho put out a Debussy album. His Images is great, but not my favorite.
As others have mentioned, Michelangeli and Richter have superb Debussy recordings. I would have to say that Michelangeli's Images I & II is my favorite. He exudes the inner light and atmosphere that Debussy's music requires.
Enjoy the music.
- but none of the Debussy tracks. The Rameau tracks seemed incredibly good - this guy has some real precision to his playing! (This was all via Qobuz BTW.)
Arrau's playing creates a sense of "atmosphere." Like Schnabel, Cortot, or Fischer, a wrong note or missing one here or there (rare, but still...) doesn't make the slightest difference to me because it's the emotion I crave, not the technical.
...if you can tolerate the subpar mono sound.
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