Debussy & Ravel by Claudio Arrau - Estampes, Images, Pour le Piano, Gaspard de la Nuit (Ct.rc.)

Since 1947, Columbia had known that its new star pianist showed a definite taste for Latin music. Two Iberia books had singularly changed the face of this exceptional musician, who had been assured of being entirely devoted to Beethoven, in the eyes of record lovers. After 1948, when the American industry suspended all its recordings, too busy converting the heavy 78 rpm albums into less fragile and more manageable LPs, Claudio Arrau decided to return to the recording studio not with his beloved Germans but with the two greatest French composers of the century, Debussy and Ravel. It is an understatement to say that he was to bring a new approach to this repertoire. Where Walter Gieseking's evocative art reigned as the undisputed master, he imposed a completely different style in four essential cycles by Claude de France. Where colour reigned, he insisted on light, and not the light of a painter, but of a sculptor, carving Michelangelo-like reliefs into texts that had been thought evanescent. This Debussy sounded immediately new. Under Arrau's fingers, Pour le Piano became a real animated marble, singularly vibrant and intense, expressive not by sentiment but by the art of proportion, and even the Images, more evocative than any other of Debussy's piano pieces, suddenly found harsh reliefs, expressive contrasts provoked by the intense flood of meridian light. For what is still astonishing in this Debussy is the intense profusion of colours and volumes, and Arrau here touches on a historical truth: Debussy is not the musical brother of the Impressionists, but of the Fauvists. For Ravel, it is a different story. Arrau only ventured into the recording of Gaspard (and in concert, it was the only work by the master of Montfort that he played relatively regularly). Darkening his piano, he transports us into the opaque phantasmagoria of Alosyus Bertrand as only Samson François could do. END

Channel: Classical Music/ /Reference Recording

Views: 18,612

Keywords: Claudio Arrau, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, arrau debussy, claudio arrau ravel, debussy piano, debussy pour le piano, debussy estampes, debussy estampes pagode, debussy estampes jardins sous la pluie, debussy estampes la soiree dans grenade, debussy images, debussy image 1, debussy pagode, debussy reflets dans l'eau, debussy images 2, ravel gaspard de la nuit, ravel gaspard de la nuit ondine, ravel gaspard de la nuit le gibet

Id: bqeVHd9uPFI

Length: 68min 8sec (4088 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021