Search - Claude Debussy, Louis-Philippe Pelletier :: Debussy: Études

NAKED DEBUSSSY

Melvyn M. Sobel | Freeport (Long Island), New York | 07/08/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Even before I read the liner notes indicating that the pianist is "firmly opposed to the distinction maintained between traditional repertoire and music of our time," I thought Pelletier's approach to Debussy curiously "modern" and the performances rather austere. At the same time, though, I found both, approach and performance, strangely compelling. Shorn from Debussy was the atmosphere, the mystery, the aural sweep I had taken for granted as intrinsic. Now appeared a composer who seemed a hair's breath away from Messiaen and Berg, bizarre as this might sound. Pelletier's stark rendition of L'Isle Joyeuse, for example, becomes a filigree exposition almost Scriabinesque in its scrupulous clarity. Masques distills the breadth of Schoenberg's Suite, Op. 25. And the Estampes, Webern's Op. 27 Variations, or pointed elements consistently reminiscent of Bernard Hermann. The Twelve Etudes, Debussy's last keyboard works, and entities most "modern," finds the pianist at his most affecting and sensitive, where other artists normally relish the opportunity to extract esoterica. How peculiar it is writing about what seems blatantly askew, but this is what makes Pelletier's playing so, needless to say, different and totally outside the realm of possibility. Yet, it works, and Debussy's music can withstand such extraordinary interpretations.[Running time: 72:02]"