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Inês Filipe - Claude Debussy: Piano Works

Ines Filipe, Claude Debussy

Label: Da Vinci Classics
Catalogue number: 9
EAN / barcode: 724356823723
Type: Album

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But Debussy's Preludes do not precede anything and are independent pieces. Yet the titles of Debussy's Preludes appear at the end of each piece. Debussy was not only one of the greatest composers of all time, but he was also a very cultured man, with a brilliant intelligence, well-read and able to write with wit and charm. The 'impressionistic' character of his output is more evident in the works that precede the Préludes, and would become increasingly negligible as Debussy's aesthetics in later years would focus on a drier perspective. The 'symbolistic' element is still fairly pronounced in the Préludes, but is far from being an overarching title that can explain and demonstrate all the elements of these pieces. Debussy's Préludes are isolated pieces, 'preludes' to nothing, and are not alone in the musical repertoire. Debussy's careful indication of the completion date of each piece enables us to establish their chronology with certainty. However, this crystal-clear simplicity can be misleading, since at least some of the pieces were written or conceived at a much earlier date. A layered writing, with few tonal ambiguities, seems to reconstruct a festive context in the sunny landscape of southern Italy; fragments of folk melodies are interspersed under and over a compelling tarantella rhythm, interrupted by the sounds of bright cymbals. If the contrast Les sons / Les collines is not audible here, we find a similar juxtaposition after this first track on the cd. Here we find Bruyères from Book Two: it is a piece that recalls Debussy's earlier style, where the solitude of an isolated melodic line (perhaps alluding to a lonely shepherd's flute melody) sometimes finds a seductive but sober harmonization. With La Puerta del vino we leave the quiet solitude of the heath and its boundless landscapes to reach a completely different environment. Debussy was deeply seduced by musical exoticism; one of the milestone experiences of his musical life was the Paris Expo where he could hear a Javanese gamelan and experience the scales, tunings and sounds of another world. Numerous pieces, for piano and orchestra, from his pen depict the landscapes and soundscapes of Spain: in this case the composer probably received his inspiration from a postcard depicting Granada's Puerta del vino in the Alhambra. Over the Habanera rhythm, a melodic line with improvisatory qualities evokes the Andalusian cante jondo. Another kind of exoticism is found in Danseuses de Delphes, the piece with which book one opens in the original sequence. Here the exoticism is both geographical (Greece) and historical, as the suggestion came to Debussy from an ancient Greek sculpture depicting three priestesses/dancers, dedicated to the cult of Apollo and therefore also prophetesses. Here too Debussy realizes a multilayered polyphony, interrupted by the sound of sistra and evoking the slow, composed and elegant movements of these ancient dancers. Edward La Vine, an American, had created the bizarre character of General Lavine, 'the man who remained a soldier his whole life'; Debussy portrays this parody of military life, with influences from the musical ancestors of jazz. The fairy-tale inhabitants of the rivers had already seduced many musicians before Debussy and water was one of the natural elements he most liked to depict. The piano evokes guitar sounds, as a guitarist tuning his instrument and hesitantly seeking how to begin his serenade. Life and death, silence and liveliness: Minstrels, the closing piece of Book One, portrays the fantasy and cheerful recklessness of a group of American 'minstrels', whose music - once again predating jazz and anticipating it - matches their brilliant performances in which acrobatics, clownery and music intertwine.

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