Symfonische muziek

On the dawn of his fortieth birthday, the Spanish pianist Javier Perianes should be more than proud of his dazzling career. Among the places that regularly welcome him we find Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Philharmonie de Paris, Gewandhaus in Leipzig and La Roque d'Anthéron. Barenboim and Larrocha were his masters. He is particularly fond of the great French repertoire of Debussy and Ravel, though he never focuses solely on them - his previous recordings have taken him to Beethoven, Mompou, Schubert or Granados. Here, he remains in the French world with Debussy's Book I from Preludes and his three Estampes, the composer’s piano masterpiece, which Perianes distils with immense instrumental colour, breathing, contrasts and a magnificent violence that counterbalances a crystal clearness at every moment, as requested by the score. © SM/Qobuz

A century after his death on 25 March 1918, many harmonia mundi artists are eager to pay tribute to Claude Debussy, the magician of melody and timbre, the great 'colourist' and father of modern music. After Rachmaninoff's Preludes, Nikolai Lugansky wanted to present a finely nuanced portrait of this composer so fond of travelling! Whether it ranges over time (Hommage à Haydn) or the most vividly imagined open spaces, this freely composed programme is concerned above all with light and colour, in works we can never tire of. © harmonia mundi

The remarkable Turkish pianist Fazıl Say (born 1970) here offers us a suitably remarkable album, recorded in 2016 in the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum and given over to the Premier Livre of Debussy's Préludes – 1910 – which he sets up in against the six Gnossiennes by Satie (1890 for the first three, 1897 for the latter three) and to the pieces which made him famous, the Gymnopédies of 1888. It's quite stunning to hear these works and to reflect on the fact that Satie's works actually come before Debussy's Préludes – by almost two decades, in fact. It is hardly surprising the Satie has been thought a real avant-gardist both in his day and by minimalists today. Considering how different these two were, it was natural that they should have been friends, especially given Debussy's tendency towards jealousy of his contemporaries... But it is impossible to be jealous of a kind, bubbly soul like Satie. Say brings immense tenderness to these two opposite poles – poles so far removed that they almost join back up. © SM/Qobuz

Since the pianist's early days, the South Korean Seong-Jin Cho (1994) has professed a fondness for French music in general and Debussy in particular. At his first public performance at the age of eleven, he played Children’s Corner by Debussy. When he decided, in 2012, to pursue his musical education abroad, he chose Paris, and the Conservatoire National Supérieur, where he frequented the classes of Michel Béroff, the undisputed expert on Debussy. Cho has come back to work again with his old teacher, who became a friend, with the aim of creating his own Debussy album; the choice of works here is "restricted" to works requiring a middling level of virtuosity - mechanical exhibition isn't his thing, even though he has amply mastered his instrument - but whose poetical content allows the pianist to show off his own exquisite expertise as a musician. An homage to his own childhood, Children’s Corner, but also the two books of Images and the exquisite Suite bergamasque. Let’s not forget that Seong-Jin Cho won Warsaw's 2015 Chopin Prize, a sure-fire ticket to an international career. © SM/Qobuz

The cream of the crop of French musicians—well, okay, Swiss for the flautist Emmanuel Pahud—come together to bring us a sumptuous album devoted to Debussy’s chamber music: Edgar Moreau for the Sonata for cello and piano, Renaud Capuçon for the Sonata for violin and piano, Gérard Caussé, Marie-Pierre Anglamet and Emmanuel Pahud for the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (these three very belated sonatas are the only ones that the composer had time to finish in his planned series of “Six sonatas for various instruments by Claude Debussy, French musician”). We find the same Emmanuel Pahud performing solo for Syrinx, and the album closes with the Trio for violin, piano and cello written in a still very classic—or even conventional—style and architecture (the shadows of Franck, Massenet and Fauré undoubtedly loom) in 1880, when the composer was residing in Florence with the von Meck family. This last work was released only a hundred years later… On the piano in all the collective works, you’ll find Bertrand Chamayou. © SM