Search - Claude Debussy, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli :: Debussy:Preludes Volume 2

Michelangeli Plays With Virtuosity, Polish And Perfection!

Raymond Vacchino | Toronto, ON. Canada | 10/30/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Debussy Preludes Book Two:



1.Brouillards: This prelude is full of the fantasy of a child watching fog through a window. Michelangeli creates the various ways and moods this prelude needs to be imagined in. The performance admires the soft wisps, the great white calm, the mist. But imagination of evil spirits, lurking dangers, awesome happenings brings a shiver of intensity. We reach out, but on all sides there is emptiness, nothing firm can be grasped and held, and like the prelude we resign to this calm cocoon, imprisoned and powerless.

2. Feuilles Montres; Dead Leaves; Michelangeli creates a vivid sonority conveying the fall of golden leaves that invest the splendid obsequies of the trees. This the Rite of Autumn, in which falling leaves are a signal of suspended life, creating a static expectancy, a mood of intense regrets of a past now so far gone. The ascending and descending passage, rhythmic patterns, dissonances over an ostinato bass seeks in vain for an answer to the fragility and beauty of life, to the finality of their disappearance.

3. La Puerta Del Vino; Michelangeli conjures the rather turbulent stimulus, where daily are celebrated the joys of wine and song, flamenco singing, drunken roistering, the call of mule drivers, and the unifying prevading rhythm of the habanera. Michelangeli provides a capacity for nervous accents one moment, and languid grace the next. It is a scene of violent contrasts between passionate softness and extreme brutality of undiluted primary colors.

4. Les Fees Sont D'Exquises Danseuses; "Fairies are exquisite dancers", dedicated to the charm of mythological characters. Michelangeli's playing reminds us of delightful illustrations of fairy tales. These tales are split into two heritages, going far back to the dual role of good and evil. This is indeed the romantic heritage of the Debussy prelude and Michelangeli makes sure that it does not contain one heavy-footed note in its eight pages. Fairies dance in the air, sing tender melodies, dance again, dream awhile, resume their harmonious course, their wings tinted by fleeting reflections. At the cadence, those last three notes are played like a dancer frozen in the midst of motion. Michelangeli sets the scene; has one spied the human intruder, horrified at the alarming secrets of her pastime, which he nows shares?

5. Bruyeres; Michelangeli plays this in a way that evokes a quaint and calm pastoral scene, with a touch of

lonliness. One is reminded of painters who specialized in hilly landscapes at sunset, with blond wheat in the foreground, the lavender heather above it, and the reddish-purple sun setting in a seashore horizon.

6. General Lavine-Eccentric; This charmingly humorous and biographical prelude brings us once more to the American scene, for its hero, Edward Lavine, typifies the anglo-saxon dexterity of clowning. Michelangeli conveys this prelude manificantly through the mood, the harmonic and melodic language, the opposition of strident rhythms with sentimental moments and the comparison to Mintrels. Rondo-sonata structure takes us through a fascinating alternation of the two main themes. General Ed Lavine, the Man Who Has Soldiered All His Life....

7. La Terrasse des Audiences Du Clair De Lune; The exact origin of the poetic and charmingly tortuous title of this prelude seems to have been the subject of some controversy. Again Michelangeli is in his element, turning our thoughts to daydreaming which has meandered far from its inception in reality. He invests the moonlit scene with innumerable sentiments: tenderness, cold lonliness, passionate unrest permiated by a sense of unreality with which moonlight endows all that it touches. The sense of sleep-walking, a strange uneasiness (caused perhaps by the opening motif so often reiterated in its strange harmonies or by the ethereal chromatic arabesque over it.) There is, at least little doubt of far off waltz rhtyhm, of the sentimental hyper-romantic accents of this turn of the century poem.

8. Ondine; Ondines belong to the mythological lore of Scandinavian and Germanic countries. They are water nymphs, whose crystal palaces are in deep pools of river beds on lakes; singing, dancing, flitting through the waters, they lure unwary fishermen and voyagers and transport them to their deep palaces where days pass in bliss, surrounded by beauty, and timeless forgetfulness- a legend to which we owe Die Lorelei, and the Rhine Maidens. Michelangeli creates the allusions to water, to ripples, to flittering figures which prevades much of the prelude in its melodic materials and accompaniment figures. One must be aware that the many motifs fall into two types; one evoking opalescence of underwater, and the others the flitting surface effects.

9. Hommage Pickwick Esq.; Starting off with a pompous complacency, wittily scored by the sonorous use of God Save the King in the bass, our hero soon recovers his genial good nature, absent minded at times. Michelangeli plays with rich, sudden and comic contrasts, from the sweeping line of the opening measures in its full contrapuntal use, large range, dynamic force, tongue in cheek, to the minute little dotted melody, light, animated and soft in the middle register, which works up a temper to crashing chords, in two opposite sequences, in a comic deformation. The best performance of this piece depends on the amount of humor one sees in it, and Michelangeli provides it throughout. It has spirit and fun with all the violent contrasts fully realized given their proper character; their timing is of the art of good story-telling.

10. Canope; In its very simplicity the opening melody is perhaps one of the most deeply touching phrases in all the preludes. The parallel chords succeed eachother, unhurried, even, and yet so deeply poignant. Modal in treatment, a temporary modulation at the 4th bar has a most telling effect. The calm legato and the phrasing marked by Debussy seem the two most important factors to recommend in the opening material.

11. Les Tierces Alternees; The problem in this prelude is no longer the subtle, stark, tender, or forceful depiction of a scene, a legend, an imaginative portrait. So close to terminating the series of Preludes, we are already anticipating the series of Etudes. Michelangeli comes to the forefront in this performance providing several elements of concern. The large dynamic levels of the phrases, the harmonic rhythm of the progressions and the melodic contour as to pitch and rhythm of the melodic notes. As to tempo, moderately animated at the beginning and a little more animated after the introduction. The tempo remains even when the dynamics fluctuate. No rubato is permissable in this prelude and one of the greatest charms is the exactness of rhythm and tempo which Michelangeli follows through to its last soft notes.

12. Feux D'Artifice; The prelude in its thematic materials center on one prevading subject in its many developments. Here is Michelangeli's opportunity to show off his virtuosic facility. One is faced with a most taxing technical feat, for if this work concludes the series of "Preludes" it also foreshadows, along with "Les tierces alternees," the series of Etudes in its demands. A new phase of virtuosity is entered upon-they do no "fall under the hand" in the accustomed 19th-century virtuoso style. A ready adaptibility to rapid changes of level between patterns on black and white keys, which in interpretation must of necessity command an equal touch and condition of the fingers and arm technique transposed rapidly in levels is what makes Michelangeli legendary in his performances of the Debussy Preludes!



Author: Raymond Vacchino M.Mus.(MT) A.Mus. L.R.S.M. Licentiate (hon.)"

SHORT MEASURE, AND NOT HIS BEST

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 05/03/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Much as I admire and love these wonderful pieces, I still have difficulty in restraining my giggles at the sheer Frenchness of some of the postscripts that the composer appended to them. When I read the inscription for no 7, for instance, `La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune', I pray for some muse with time on her hands to inspire me to `La plainte du berger qui a perdu ses moutons sous la pluie' or something of the kind. That said, it is a sublime, superlative, piece of music, as are they all. I don't to this day have a really fixed notion of how they should be best played. However I had been mightily impressed by Michelangeli's accounts of book I of the preludes, as by his Children's Corner and Images, so it was high time to acquaint myself with his insights into book II. This recording seems to have been made in 1988, the year in which he was first taken ill from the heart condition that was to kill him seven years later, and whether for that reason or some other I have come away with the feeling that this disc is not all it might have been. The best is saved for the end. Feux d'Artifice is truly remarkable, with the background figuration displaying the haughty uniqueness of touch that set Michelangeli apart when he was at his best. Michelangeli's Debussy in general was not along the lines of, say, Gieseking's or Richter's. It was not specially `impressionistic', the touch deployed was a big touch and the coloration was vivid to the point almost of being garish. Down the years my own benchmark has been an extraordinary live performance from Richter, showing aspects of that giant at his very greatest whether or not it can be deemed a safe recommendation. The difference between him and Michelangeli shows up most spectacularly in the first number, Brouillards. Richter's touch is a miracle of nebulous mistiness, as quiet as could be. By comparison M sounds rather matter-of-fact, and the impression persists through the first 11 pieces, except for La Puerta del Vino and General Lavine which I'm not sure Richter really understands. I'm inclined to say to other listeners `Don't just go off first impressions'. M had a different concept of Debussy entirely. Nevertheless the feeling that this is not, until no12, M at his most inspired is hard to shake off. Even in some purely technical respects such as the execution of trills M is not the out-of-this-world wonder that I know from other contexts. It's tempting to say about Michelangeli that one has to take the smooth with the smooth. He was not exactly lavish in the amount of his playing he bequeathed to us, and I collect his work systematically for that very reason. When he was below his best the smoothness had a tendency to expressionlessness, and that tendency shows through just a very little here. It's not a disc I would part with, nor is anything else I have from him. Nonetheless when I want to remember M in the Debussy preludes it's La Cathedrale Engloutie and Le Vent sur la Plaine from book I that I tend to think of, from book II only Feux d'Artifice. The recorded quality is perfectly satisfactory, there is a rather run-of-the-mill liner note, but a cd containing less than 40 minutes' playing would have to be very exceptional indeed for me to give it a higher rating, and for the reasons I've given this disc doesn't seem to me quite that."

Michelangeli's wizardry: the definitive Debussy!,

Santa Fe Listener | 02/05/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Two words to describe Debussy played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli: infinite and inimitable! If possible get the double cd with Preludes 1 & 2 , Images 1 & 2 and Children's Corner."