then we saw the stars again

Claude Debussy, Preludes Volume I. Voiles

———————-

It’s the end of the year. For some it’s the end of the decade, though everyone knows that the decade will only end next year… either way, everywhere you turn someone is writing a top 3/5/10/100 somewhere.

So that set me thinking. If I were to pick my 3 favourite piano pieces, which would they be? I’m perfectly aware that those 3 choices would change tomorrow, next week, or even later, but I’ve been giving this top 3 some thinking, and for the time being, I’ll stick to it. So in the next couple of episodes, this is what I’ll share, rather than a more obvious tie to a postrock theme or feature. Of course, you may find affinities of your own if you listen closely…
———————-
There was a time when I started getting bored with classical music. I suppose you could have put this on the account of a teenage crisis, a reaction against the music my parents would mostly listen to at the time, or the fact that I wasn’t entirely thrilled about my piano lessons… So I swapped the piano for a Roland synth and a Stratocaster, dropped out of the music school I was attending, and got into MTV’s alternative nation and 120 minutes.
And postrock, once that term came about.

And that was great. By myself and with friends, I learnt a lot more about music theory and harmony over those few years than in the laborious decade that had preceded. There’s nothing like the automatic chord predictor function on a keyboard to let you understand how a song works, and finding it out on your own makes you realise that music is just another language that you are slowly mastering.

That’s when I started missing classical music again…

Music can be like close relationships. You fall in love, sometimes you fall out, sometimes you make up and when that works out you understand why you fell in love in the first place. Debussy made me fall in love with classical music again.
In my senior year of high school I wanted to resume my piano lessons, and besides the obvious romantic staples of Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, Debussy opened a world of possibilities I wasn’t aware of. His unusual harmonies and chord patterns belonged to a whole different universe from the classical music I had been used to until then, and his sense of melody seemed both instinctual and incredibly foreign.
You can’t really beat the piano for versatility and range, but with Debussy the instrument suddenly sounded like bells or windchimes, thanks to his ingenious use of the pedals and harmonics.

Like the Impressionist painters he was often linked with, Debussy was an artist of transition, a modernist with late-romantic ideals. Tone and colour are fundamental in his work, whether solo piano Etudes or fully orchestral pieces. Technique is never an end but a means to achieve this ethereal quality, the twilight skies of a Monet painting. And the Preludes should be seen as a series of musical polaroids, sudden sketches where the subjects are left incomplete rather than fully fleshed out. The score is just an outline. The rest is our own interpretation.
That seemed like a perfect match for me, as a musician and as a student. I could totally relate to Debussy’s soundscapes and artistic vision, and I still believe that his music achieves the delicate act of balancing familiarity with experimentation.

There was only one problem, and I found out about it too late. I wasn’t good enough anymore to really play Debussy properly. But that’s another story…

———————-
Many pianists have recorded Debussy’s Preludes and Etudes. Claudio Arrau gives a refined and aristocratic reading of those pieces, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s version is bold and exuberant, but the benchmark is Still Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s recordings.
The elusive Italian pianist was famous for his exacting sound and attention to detail, and with Debussy he was able to commit to this uncanny precision to the fullest. The tone of his piano is surprisingly rich and varied, as clear and metallic as it can sound distant and wooden. The control and restraint that he displays are remarkable, light years away from the more polarising and egotistical stars of the lid of our generation…
———————-

Unfortunately, the video cannot be embedded by request from the uploader.

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVyQhUM5C4