Claude Debussy
Martha Argerich, Michael Barenboim, Kian Soltani, Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

WITH the rise of Impressionism in France from the 1870s onwards, led by the likes of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir in painting, so too there were moves towards abstraction and pure atmospheres in orchestral music.

Claude Debussy, a pioneer of what was to become ambient music, a term first used by Brain Eno a century later, both eccentric figures.

Between 1872 to 1880 Debussy attended the Paris Conservatoire.

Maurice Emmanuel, a composer and fellow student at the Conservatoire, said the following about Debussy: “He delivered himself a welter of chords … A rustling of misshapen arpeggios alternated with a gurgling of trills on three notes simultaneously on both hands. For more than an hour he held us under his spell while we stood around the piano.”

A description that also apt for Daniel Barenboim, pianist and conductor, now aged  79, still approaching his work with courage and ambition.

For his latest Debussy album for Deutsche Grammophon (DG), Barenboim conducts the Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich and the Staatskapelle Berlin for Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra.

The work is a strident, optimistic up-tempo composition, for the album a performance recorded live in Vienna at the Musikverein concert hall in 2018, celebrating the centenary of Debussy’s death.

Written in 1889, the piece remained unperformed until after Debussy’s death. Barenboim’s conducting holds all elements with exceptional poise and grace, packing an intense emotional punch.

The Violin Sonata in G Minor for Piano and Violin, completed in 1915, is the second work, with Michael Barenboim, son of Daniel, leading on violin.

Then the Cello Sonata in D Minor, first performed in Paris on March 24 1917. Daniel Barenboim is joined by cellist Kian Soltani.

Both sonatas recorded at the Berlin, Pierre Boulez Saal, ensure a crystal-like clarity in both the acoustic and recording, especially in the midrange detail.
 
The highlight of the album is La Mer, a work in three movements, set over some 26 minutes. 

First performed in Paris on October 15 1905, From Dawn to Midday at Sea, the first movement, is full of brooding woodwind, low then high strings and brass, tempos shifting around rolling timpani and hinted melodic tints before bursting into full bloom.

Play of the Waves, the second, ups the tempo and intensity before the drama of Dialogue between the Wind and the Sea finishes.

Debussy claimed that he was not interested in composing a naturalistic description of the sea as such but rather in capturing an impression of a wide range of characteristics, from the tranquillity of the sea’s smooth surface to its violent and tempestuous primeval power.

For this recording in parts the climatic sequences gain from a subtle and fresh interpretation.