Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918 )
Children’s Corner; Suite bergamasque; Danse; Arabesques Nos. 1 and 2;
Pour le piano
Masques; L’isle joyeuse; La plus que lente
Angela Hewitt (piano)
rec. 12-15 December 2011, Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin
HYPERION CDA67898 [79:36]
Complete editions seem to be the norm nowadays, especially in the case of
Debussy’s piano music, so it’s refreshing to be able to welcome
an old-fashioned recital, particularly one as successful as this. Angela Hewitt
has chosen a well balanced programme, and writes comprehensively about it
in a most readable booklet essay that includes many snippets of information
that I hadn’t come across before. This being Hyperion, the presentation
is so comprehensive that you can read it in French or German as well if you
feel so inclined. The recording, in a lightly reverberant church acoustic,
is just the job.
Children’s Corner opens with the spoof piano exercise “Doctor
Gradus ad Parnassum”, and it’s a very diligent pupil playing here,
very fast, regular and accurate in the opening semiquavers. I wish I had pupils
like that! As the young player’s mind starts to wander, and the fingers
start to wander, Hewitt doesn’t quite achieve the uncanny, almost cinematographic
realism of Michelangeli (DG, 1971), but then, who does? Michelangeli is similarly
magical when Jimbo finally dozes off at the end of the second piece, but Hewitt
is no less persuasive in her own, more overtly expressive, way. The doll’s
serenade is quite clipped, missing out on some of the tenderness perhaps,
and there are comments to make about each of the remaining pieces, as this
is a performance full of insight that frequently presents music that one has
known and loved for many years in a new way.
Angela Hewitt writes that the Suite bergamasque has been a favourite
of hers since she first played it at the age of fourteen. I was interested
in this, because I have never quite been able to take to it. The titles of
three of the four movements lead us to expect something along classical -
even Baroque - lines, with the one remaining title, “Clair de Lune”,
apparently the odd-man-out. To my ears, Angela Hewitt finds something close
to the perfect balance between pure classical/Baroque sensibility and the
opposing world of Commedia dell’arte represented by the second
word of the title. The opening call to attention, for example, is broad and
sonorous, Hewitt clearly ready to respect the composer’s rubato
marking, but at signal points throughout the rest the articulation is crystal
clear, aligned with a most subtle use of the pedal. The famous “Clair
de Lune” is played without any excess sentiment, though nobody would
ever call it “straight”. Overall, this is one of the finest performances,
perhaps the finest performance, I have ever heard of this elusive work.
“Limpid” is a word often applied to Debussy’s first Arabesque
- usually meant as a compliment - and to performances of it. It’s a
very good word, in all its varying senses, to apply to Hewitt’s performance
of the outer passages, though she beautifully brings out the improvisatory
character of the middle section also. The second Arabesque, quite different
in character, and a more searching work, is just as successful, the moment
of calm shortly before the end is exquisitely managed. Danse is an
early, minor work, though as I have written elsewhere, minor Debussy is pretty
much major nearly everybody else. Hewitt approaches it as a major, if slightly
frivolous, work. Pour le piano has long been one of my favourite Debussy
piano works, and once again Hewitt is on top form. The opening movement is
properly imposing, and she is very sensitive indeed to the melancholy aspect
of the central “Sarabande”. Her performance of the closing “Toccata”
is very exciting indeed, but there is a fierceness about some of the louder
passages that sent me back to my preferred reading, that by Tamás Vásáry
(DG, 1969). Without sacrificing anything in the way of power, he gets closer,
especially in the sonorous, exultant middle section, to Debussy’s ideal
of “a piano without hammers”.
The great discovery of this recital for me was Masques, a piece that
has unaccountably passed me by in a lifetime of studying Debussy’s piano
music. It is a brilliant yet sombre masterpiece, and Angela Hewitt is the
finest of advocates for it. She turns in a fizzing performance of another
of my favourites, the magnificent L’isle joyeuse, and one which
perfectly reflects her view of the piece as one “whose tremendous energy
needs to be held slightly in check … before the outburst of unbounded
joy.” There then follows a long pause - this disc can easily be heard
and enjoyed in a single sitting - before the delicious, nostalgic, slightly
tongue-in-cheek, but no less touching for all that, closing waltz, La plus
que lente.
William Hedley