Debussy: 12 Etudes; Berg: Sonate Op. 1

On this CD:

1. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 Nos. 1-12
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

2. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 2, Pour les Tierces
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

3. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 3, Pour les Quartes
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

4. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 4, Pour les Sixtes
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

5. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 5, Pour les Octaves
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

6. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 6, Pour les Huit Doigts
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

7. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 7, Pour les Degrés Chromatiques
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

8. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 8, Pour les Agréments
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

9. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 9, Pour les Notes Répétées
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

10. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 10, Pour les Sonorités Opposées
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

11. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 11, Pour les Arpèges Composés
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

12. Études (12) for piano, L. 136 No 12, Pour les Accords
Composed by Claude Debussy
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

13. Piano Sonata, Op. 1
Composed by Alban Berg
Performed by Maurizio Pollini

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Pollini devotes four-fifths of this disc to the 12 etudes of Claude Debussy, and impressively done they are. The remaining piece, which predates the Debussy by a few years, is Alban Berg's powerfully compressed one-movement Piano Sonata Op. 1--which already shows the 23-year-old composer's ability to reconcile the demands of form with the inherently volatile tendencies of an expressionistic musical idiom. Pollini's lean, rhythmically precise reading and hard, bright tone give the piece a remarkable intensity. The 1992 recording is direct and analytic, like the performance. --Ted Libbey

Tracks:

Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les (cinq doits) d'apres Monsieur Czerny
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les tierces
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les quartes
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les sixtes
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les octaves
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 1) - Pour les huit doigts
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les degres chromatiques
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les agrements
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les notes repetees
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les sonorites opposees
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les arpeges composes
Douze Etudes Pour Piano (Book 2) - Pour les accords
Sonate Fur Klavier, Op. 1 - Massig bewegt

Amazon.com essential recording

Pollini devotes four-fifths of this disc to the 12 etudes of Claude Debussy, and impressively done they are. The remaining piece, which predates the Debussy by a few years, is Alban Berg's powerfully compressed one-movement Piano Sonata Op. 1--which already shows the 23-year-old composer's ability to reconcile the demands of form with the inherently volatile tendencies of an expressionistic musical idiom. Pollini's lean, rhythmically precise reading and hard, bright tone give the piece a remarkable intensity. The 1992 recording is direct and analytic, like the performance. --Ted Libbey

Customer Reviews:

Pollini the Great.......2007-02-08

Not since Charles Rosen's superlative interpretation of this great piano masterwork has someone come along to stand beside him. Dedicated to Chopin, these two books of etudes reveal Debussy's own personal profound lifetime summation of keyboard revelations. This is one of the keystones of 20th century piano masterpieces and displays Debussy's great genius for all to hear. I am aware also why so many fine pianists have shunned this work, for it requires not only the widest virtuoso technical ability with the deepest musical insight to perform these pieces not as mere piano exercises but as the great music it is. For this can be clearly seen as even this musical work eluded the great Walter Gieseking who played it only passing well. Only with Charles Rosen's arrival did this work finally find its spiritual soulmate. I eagerly await Zoltan Kocsis long promised version but Rosen and Pollini are the two greatest interpreters of this masterwork. Perhaps someday, Charles Rosen's great interpretation will make its way onto compact disc - it is long overdue!

Romantic beats impressionism.......2006-04-27

Pollini plays Debussy might be a challenge. Although he has huge, tremendously huge, repertories after his ten years silence he hadn't been playing French pieces. I don't figure out why but French music is somehow so special that is obviously different between played by French musicians and by non-French musicians. It seems that, to play French music, you need to be French at first. That is why I love French music, it is subtle to make it is supposed to be.

Pollini's performance is, here, remarkable, sensible, and flawless as always. His play was filled with a sense of Debussy, a sense of impressionism, and a sense of French intonation, as if he speaks French on the piano. The piece is Twelve Etudes for Piano, a set of short pieces, he express a taste of each short piece with perfect technique.

However, when Berg's Sonata started, these special impressions I had with Debussy were gone away. I wonder why he put these two pieces on one CD. I have a doubt this coupling was the best.
The sonata is only piece for the piano by Berg and the first piece to be published. This piece reminds me Verkl?rte Nacht by Schoenberg or Prelude of Tristan and Isolde by Wagner.

Romantic music suppose to be the most beautiful language to act intense emotion. The sonata obviously has this feature and Pollini perform it beyond his technique. I forgot about his flawless technique during listing the piece, I just fell into dynamic of the sound. I guess although Pollini is the most skillful pianist in present time, his strength is to play passion that hides even his super skill then there is just music. I recalled the conductor Ozawa mentioned in his book about Pollini "It is a big mistake to see he has great technique but no heart, there is no pianist who has such great passion like him." Now I understand what he meant.

I am not a romantic music fan, I prefer music which attracts sense rather than emotion. However here, I can not avoid seeing romantic beats impressionism.

blazingly bright.......2005-04-10

The relevance of Debussy's "Etudes" and the dimension that seems to attract most important pianists is that they were the last statement of "diatonic" music, Debussy knew something was in the air of dodecaphonic 12 Tone thinking but he really had no way, no pathway into utilizing it or developing it. So we have these 12 elegantly rendered "etudes", the genre of "Etude" has found great vigour in recent history with Cage's " Etudes Australes", and Gyorgy Ligeti"Two Books". This Debussy neither looks backwards nor frontways, these are pieces that sum up his life, with a refined sense of complex structure, where these "etudes" reiterate materials only at great expense to the content of the music. They do develop the"etude" as finger study to its utmost as the last one on"oppositions", it is incredibly difficult to keep incessantly throwing yours hands in opposite directions, it is more a physical feet than intellectual. Pollini brings his sensitivity to the modern, all the modernist repertoire he enjoys playing finds itself here,his concept then is that Debussy looked forwards with technical innovation. The"etude" genre seems quite suited to this agenda in that there is not much one can do within the "diatonic" system as well as not really engaging in "tonality" long past the post-romantics, so the "materials" then are texture,timbre,register,density and placement,juxtaposing your materials as you proceed, linear development a richer one, in that the ideas reiterate themselves over time, small segments of time, for Debussy knew that each "etude" could only inhabit a small durational frame to be effective.The "diatonic" ideas here for etude "spends" themselves very quickly, and in most he introduces secondary ideas, some never to return.The "lightness" of touch was also Debussy way, and another favorite is the repeated=note etude. If you have ever heard actual recordings of Debussy at the piano, he had a very light timbral piano. My favorite is the "chromatic" etude, where you have find delicate moving "smears" of lines moving crossing, overlapping each other. The "Fourths" as well almost sounds like a Japanese folk song, has a "mystery" about it, the "First Etude",is a skewed tribute actual sarcasm here to the school of Czerny,and the finger dexterity of vacuous contemplation, still the fingers need to move fast continusously, perhaps some music content would help, as well. I prefer Uchida's interpretations,she brings a little more passion than Pollini's blazingly bright resonance, not overbearing,simply bright.

The Berg Sonata here as well, is a work really overplayed,and it really is not that fascinating a piece,it really does nothing new nor innovative for piano timbre as Webern(his latter "Variations") and Schoenberg(Opus 11, or the "Five Pieces" had done. Hanns Eisler's(the unacknowledged Schoenberg student) "First Sonata", is indeed more interesting.

Maddening.......2002-01-31

When is the music world going to admit that this beloved artist is a colorless, unimaginative pianist. Too often we take stolid performancers as this and call them "architects". Why, because they make a piece hang together? Pollini is too unimaginative to take the risk of having something fall apart.

Maddening.......2002-01-31

As alaways, Pollini plays competently, but when will the public finally admit that this beloved artist is maddeningly lacking warmth, poetry, and imagination? He is a stolid pianist who plays with virtually no color.

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