DEBUSSY
Douze Etudes Books 1 &
2
Mitsuko Uchida
(piano)
PHILIPS 50 Great
Recordings 464 698-2 [47.12]
Crotchet
£8.50
Amazon
UK £8.99 Amazon US
Short measure, but highest quality. It is only in comparatively recent times
that the Debussy studies (see
Thibaudet
and Pollini
), his last compositions for solo piano, have come to be acknowledged
as one of his most important works and equally significant in the roster
of didactic piano music. Like those of Chopin, musical considerations surpass
the technical ones. They are wonderfully self-generating pieces, in which
the sense of direction can be elusive, e.g. what happens to the stiff five
Czerny-based finger exercise which begins the whole series. They are very
hard, but hold no terrors for Uchida, who gives one of her most cherished
recorded performances for this welcome reissue.
These studies should have a place in any collection of piano music or any
of Debussy, and Uchida well earns for it her place in the Philips
50 Great Recordings series. She is a splendid guide through their
intricacies. The recording by Philips is excellent, and for commentary you
are in the safe hands of Misha Donat, who always has something original to
say.
Peter Grahame Woolf
