FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Golliwogs Cakewalk

Question:
For Debussy fans, I thought I would bring to your attention Steve's excellent Debussy site, in which he describes (in pianistic terms) his thoughts on the playing of many of Debussy's piano pieces. The children's piece, the Golliwog's Cakewalk, is fully covered.

Answer:
I've been listening to several of my versions of the Preludes, and while I wouldn't say that there is so obviously a Debussy pianist as there is a Chopin pianist in terms of immediately recognisable stylistic qualities, there are some broad pointers to a good Debussy pianist. For a start, I personally think that the music deserves to be played faster than a lot of pianists play it. I think the reasons for this come from within the music itself - there are innumerable small themes and motifs that make a clear impact when they are played at a tempo where they hang together, but tend to escape notice when they are drawn out in slow tempi. Cortot plays fast, and very effectively in terms of revealing these themes. Second, there is rhythm and dance in Debussy just as there is in Chopin - for example in the Serenade Interrompu and Collines d'Anacapri, and to me a good Debussy pianist - again like Cortot - captures this rhythmic element well. But above all, I experience these Debussy pieces as soundscapes attached to the French Impressionist tradition, so I want to see in my minds eye a picture of the prelude or whatever (yes, I know the titles may have been tagged on afterwards..), and I want to see, hear and smell France as it was around and just after the turn of the century. When the piece is Voiles, I want to see sails off the Normandy coast fluttering in a sea breeze - a picture already in my mind from the Impressionist paintings. With Cortot you get just that - you can practically see the undulations of the canvas. To achieve this needs not sonority but expert control over pedalling and trills. Which leads me to the worst sin of the Debussy pianist - an obsession with slow sonorous sound. It's not just that this can sound boring in itself, more that it accentuates some of the weaker parts of the music itself. La Cathedral Engloutie, for instance, is a piece I can only sit through with some degree of restlessness at the best of times, but at over seven minutes (Michelangeli et al) I'll cut my losses and put up with Cortot's brisk traversal (4.34). There is another element to Debussy which is more modernistic - clashes of chords, dissonances, unusual melodic lines - (e.g. in the Etudes) and any pianist who really brings this out goes to the top of my list. Those who do include Rosen (Etudes) Neuhaus ( some of his Preludes, like Pas sur la Neige are superb) and again Cortot. Summing up my own personal take on this, I find the pianists who are consistently good are Cortot, Neuhaus, Rosen. close to these are Michelangeli, Richter, Egorov, Jacob Flier, Michel Beroff and Gieseking. A bit further back, Casadesus (preludes unexpectedly disappointing) Roge, and no doubt several others including Rev. I don't have many bad recordings of Debussy, but one is Pollini;s Etudes (live) which I think is pretty vile. I wish someone would release Rosen's Etudes on CD - I have 3 versions of the LP just in case....