Debussy: Images

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Roberto Cominati isn't faking it. Although he might not be so well-known on the French side of the Alps, be in no doubt that he is a great musician! This second Debussy album is another patient step on the road to a recording of the composer's complete works, which promises to rank among the greatest on record. Fascination, mystery, the ineffable: these are words that spring to mind upon hearing this fine recording. That's because Debussy's music isn't narrative: it's all suggestion and lightning flash. Following Ravel, here Cominati is exploring the continent of Debussy.
In this second volume, given over to Images and Estampes amongst others, this multi-award-winning musician breathes a gust of freedom into the music. His Reflets dans l’eau grab you and don't let go: the sounds are at once molten and clear, the discourse rhapsodic and controlled. There is, perhaps, a touch too much reverb in the mix on this recording. But Roberto Cominati – who takes to Claude Achille like a duck to water – wreathes his reading of these works in an unearthly glow. This student of Aldo Ciccolini measures out his nuances with the precision of an alchemist. His peerlessly majestic Soirée dans Grenade deploys an incredible variety of colours and its many soundscapes create a sensation of drunkenness. Unlike his teacher, Roberto Cominati does not foreground the frictions and rough spots that dot the writing and the harmonies of these scores (and which were such a delight in Ciccolini's work). He is more taken with the suppleness of the discourse, as his Isle joyeuse makes clear. But it's still a delight to take a dive into what we might call, with Bachelard's Water and Dreams, a "meditation on imagination and matter". © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz