This year’s centenary of Claude Debussy’s death has produced the expected splurge of special issues, but few have upset the existing order of the finest performances on disc. The late works have been well served, and outstanding accounts of the three sonatas Debussy composed between 1915 and 1917 – all that he lived to complete of a projected set of six – have framed the anniversary.
In any other year, either the earlier collection on Erato, with pianist Bertrand Chamayou as the common factor, or this new set would have swept other rivals before it. As it is, it’s very hard to choose between them in the sonatas – and a choice might come down to the pieces filling out the two discs. The Erato disc opts for Debussy’s very early and very French piano trio, but the Harmonia Mundi fill-ups are more interesting, including four tiny piano pieces from the last four years of his life, played by Tanguy de Williencourt.
None of them is a miniature masterpiece, but all are touching reminders of Debussy’s precarious health and finances during those last wartime years. Berceuse Héroïque and Élégie are memorials, tributes to “much patient suffering”, while Les Soirs Illuminés Par l’Ardeur du Charbon, was written for his coal merchant in exchange for much-needed fuel. Among the sonatas, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Javier Perianes’s performance of the cello work stands out for its irrepressible energy and wit, although Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov are typically attentive to every fleck of colour and change of mood in the Violin Sonata. Only the account of the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (Magali Mosnier, Antoine Tamestit and Xavier de Maistre) disappoints. Not because of any shortcomings in the playing, but because the closeness of the recording deprives the elusive, melancholy work of some of its intimacy.
This week’s other picks
Another masterpiece from Debussy’s final years, the piano Études, used to be a rarity on disc. They still have some way to go to achieve the popularity of the Préludes or the Images, but new versions appear quite regularly.
The latest is by Joseph Moog, who pairs the 12 pieces with Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. The young German pianist has all the technique necessary to meet the deceptive challenges of the studies, but he overemphasises the virtuoso element. These are performances that seem to look back, not only to earlier Debussy, but also to the 19th-century Listzian tradition; to everything, in fact, that the pared down objectivity of Debussy’s late music seemed to be reacting against.
