Legendary recordings, a re up to it!

In Debussy, as we know, there is Walter Gieseking, and then there are the others. It is astonishing that a German pianist have come the most admirable records of the greatest French composer, but it was perhaps a compatriot Debussy and Schumann to give this deep meditative music that refused him hitherto so often. Indeed, Gieseking did more than give a version that passes for reference until today in this almost-full recorded from 1951 to 1954 by the microphones of Walter Legge (it lacks only Contest Piece, Main Page album, Elegy and forgotten images discovered in 1978). Indeed it was the real architect of an entrance at the most basic piano repertoire of these admirable pages.

In the Preludes, Gieseking thus unsurpassed, with a haughty style but never stiff, managing to characterize each room without falling into caricature impressionist Debussy so clearly rejected. Thus Sails, The Sunken Cathedral, Ondine, beyond the evocation or the game to be contrary to the thoughts, each with a certain weight, a certain intention rhetoric.
Debussy get to the powerful speech that structure its short and long pieces, that although what comes Gieseking, and this is what also reflected short pieces, Images, L'isle joyeuse, the Bergamo Suite. Besides Studies, finally rarely successful disk.
After Gieseking, so all others. But his influence on generations of pianists that followed was another of his achievements. On its course students, only Albert Ferber perhaps have well mastered the entire corpus Debussy, or Werner Haas, alas disappeared too soon. But we must also admit that the influence of Gieseking also touched Monique Haas and beautiful Preludes and Claudio Arrau himself, who Debuussy was the natural complement to the German repertoire. Perhaps only Michelangeli one hand, and Samson François on the other, which does not also finished their cycles (the first choice, the second by the force of things ...), ventured into d Other aesthetic directions.

This new reissue is truly a luxury offered by EMI also a very affordable price. Think about it: a real little book-CD with a richly illustrated booklet of photos and original vinyl reproductions, with text on the back of the booklets and a new article on the interpreter and works. Above all, this is 4 hybrid SACD, therefore usable on any CD player, and a new novel remastering. Initially intended for the Japanese market this collection accomplishes miracles that collectors used to the Japanese market know well. This means that the noise (such recordings are of age) is minimized without affecting the important frequencies, and so did not feel the cleaning too strong that one could detect in other EMI reissues made more industrial way (Great Recordings of the Century series especially). So it is here in all points of a new editorial reference for these historic records.