Claude Debussy - Images & Préludes II (Marc-André Hamelin)

Information

Composer: Claude Debussy

• (01) Images, Book I
• (04) Images, Book II
• (07) Préludes, Book II

Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Date: 2014
Label: Hyperion
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67920

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Review

Marc-André Hamelin’s stature, extraordinary from the start, increases with every new issue. And here in his latest album he subdues his legendary, transcendent technique to convey Debussy’s very essence with a surpassing ease and naturalness. For him, personal idiosyncrasy or impediment – a determination to be different at all costs – would affront Debussy’s genius, and so he offers profoundly expressive yet lucid and transparent insights into the composer’s teeming imagination.

His opening to ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ is hauntingly shaded and indolent; and in the final pages, when the ripples move outwards from the centre, there is an uncanny sense of stillness and resolution. In ‘Cloches à travers les feuilles’ the funeral bells toll from village to village, from All Saints’ Day to All Souls’ Day with a special poignancy, while in ‘Brouillards’ there is a superb if unintentional riposte to a drier French tradition (exemplified at its least engaging in, for example, Cécile Ousset’s recording) with an uncanny sense of eerily shifting mist and flickering half-lights. In ‘Hommage à S Pickwick Esq’ you sense how, as Roger Nichols puts it in his scholarly, witty and sensitive notes, Debussy ‘rather admired English sangfroid (those were the days…), but was not beyond giving it the occasional dig in the ribs’. Finally, ‘Feux d’artifice’ and a fiery display of Bengal lights, pinwheels and soaring rockets resolved in a distant fragment of the Marseillaise.

The poetic sheen and finish of all these performances are things to marvel at, leaving me to long for more Debussy, to say nothing of Fauré and Ravel, from an artist supremely attuned to the French repertoire, as to so much else. Hamelin’s glistening sonority is flawlessly captured by the Hyperion team. This is a disc to treasure.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / RECORDING: ****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2015/Mar/Debussy_images_CDA67920.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/apr/17/marc-andre-hamelin-review
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=12509
https://www.allmusic.com/album/debussy-images-pr%C3%A9ludes-ii-mw0002763866
https://www.amazon.com/Debussy-Images-Books-Preludes-Book/dp/B00NJARPBU

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Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His innovative harmonies and his use of non-traditional scales were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century and also some modern music groups. Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy

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Marc-André Hamelin (born September 5, 1961 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. Hamelin is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical brilliance of his performances of the classic repertoire. He has made recordings of a wide variety of composers with the Hyperion label. He is well known for his attention to lesser-known composers especially of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and for performing works by pianist-composers. Hamelin has also composed several works, including a set of piano études in all of the minor keys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-Andr%C3%A9_Hamelin

http://www.marcandrehamelin.com/

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