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What are your favourites for Books 1 and 2? (there are also 3 earlier Images)
My short list:
Ogawa
Gieseking
Casadesus
Paul Jacobs
Michelangeli
Book 1:
Richter (Carnegie Hall 1960 and Szeged 1972)
Gilels
Follow Ups:
I second the recommendation of Arrau. Also hoping that Neson Freire records these. His Preludes, Book 1 and Children's Corner are marvelous...
Harry Z
Stumbled on this one some time ago while browsing the QOBUZ catalog.
Paul Jacobs is my fav and the audio is excellent.
Paul Jacobs is a real keeper - beautiful pianism, the way you get with someone like Kempff. And it's all intelligent, well thought out and devoid of sentimental lingerings and rubato.
I like his Etudes in particular.
With Debussy: Etudes For Piano / En Blanc Et Noir in the cue.
d
And as good as Moravec (and Richter, Michelangeli, and others on your list) is/are, I just feel too much subtlety is lost in this type of music when listening in less than SOTA SQ. For this reason, my go-to performance these days is Bavouzet on Chandos in its fantastic two-channel 24/96 download incarnation (no multi-channel, unfortunately) from The Classical Shop. (Not that I still don't listen to older recordings sometimes too!)
Also, getting back to less-than-SOTA-SQ "historical" performances, I pray for a decent issue (from the master tapes) of the great, great recording of the complete Debussy Piano Works by Daniel Ericourt (originally on the Kapp label). I appreciate what Ivory Classics has done to try to get these performances out to the public, but their CD transcriptions (dubbings) off of the original LP issues unfortunately just highlights all the major problems with the vinyl format. DG has the master tapes now, and the only crumb they've issued so far is some miscellaneous works (Le petite nègre, Valse romantique, Masques, etc.) played by Ericourt in their big-box "The Debussy Edition" (18-discs).
I tried listening to Moravec's Images on Spotify, but all the titles are mixed up. eventually found it under Chopin Mazurka 40. It's indeed fine playing, and a good recording too.
I have Ericourt's Debussy CD box. The playing is quite eccentric despite his closeness to Debussy and his era. I listened with interest for a while because it was different, but I don't find it's a keeper. I couldn't listen to Poissons d'Or much more than once. Also the recording is quite poor and overloads when he plays loudly, which is quite a lot in some of the pieces. More drama than delicacy for my ears.
As I said, it's a shame that the Ivory Classics box, despite the producers' good intentions, doesn't show Ericourt's playing to its best advantage and indeed imparts a more strenuous quality to his playing than a better remastering of the tapes might suggest. (And of course the shattering distortion you mention is doubly unfortunate.)
However, the mammoth DG box is also available on Spotify and I'd urge you to give Ericourt's playing another chance based on the performances (and improved sound quality) of the miscellaneous pieces there. (I believe these performances are all on disc 18 - no Images unfortunately.)
Got's to have some Ivan.
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