2CD
476 290-0
Duncan Gif ford
John Peter Russell Storm, Belle Ile. Collection: Art Gallery of NSW
PIANO
Debussy
Complete Preludes
CLAUDE DEBUSSY 1862-1918
Complete Preludes
CD 2
CD 1
Book I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
!
@
Book II
41’15
Danseuses de Delphes (Delphic Dancers)
3’11
Voiles (Sails or Veils)
3’50
Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain)
2’14
‘Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir’
(‘Sounds and Scents Swirl in the Evening Air’)
3’35
Les collines d’Anacapri (The Hills of Anacapri)
3’17
Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the Snow)
3’42
Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Saw)
3’22
La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair)
2’37
La sérénade interrompue (The Interrupted Serenade)
2’36
La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)
6’27
La danse de Puck (Puck’s Dance)
Minstrels
2’47
2’26
1
2
3
4
40’18
Brouillards (Mists)
3’27
Feuilles mortes (Autumn Leaves)
3’05
La puerta del Vino
3’29
‘Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses’
(‘Fairies are Exquisite Dancers’)
3’10
5 Bruyères (Heather)
6 Général Lavine – excentric
7 La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune
2’57
(The Terrace for Moonlight Audiences)
4’53
8
9
0
!
@
Ondine
3’17
Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.
2’20
Canope
2’42
Les tierces alternées (Alternating Thirds)
2’46
Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)
4’21
Total Playing Time
Duncan Gifford piano
2
2’52
3
81’33
teacher named Cerutti. These took place while
the composer was living in Cannes. Leon Vallas,
one of Debussy’s chief biographers, claims that
the teacher ‘does not seem to have noticed any
particular talent in the child’.
Revisiting Debussy
I. Claude Debussy – The Early Years
So much is said about Debussy’s piano music,
yet so little consideration is given to Debussy’s
own formative pianistic influences. Admittedly,
Debussy’s pianistic family tree is as quizzical as
‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ But in order to
establish the background to performance
practice in the music of Debussy it is essential
to consider the composer’s own early training
and formative influences. Although he was no
practising performer himself, as a youngster
Debussy attracted considerable attention for his
performance traits. In later years he drew both
praise for his originality as well as adverse
criticism for his keyboard style. His comments
made through letters or in conversation with
people such as the pianist Marguerite Long and
his publisher Jacques Durand are indicative of a
considerable knowledge of pianism.
His next teacher poses something of a mystery
and invites a great deal of controversy. Mme
Antoinette Flore Mauté de Fleurville (d.1884)
who was the mother-in-law of the poet Verlaine,
is said to have been a pupil of Chopin. However,
neither in his published letters nor in an account
of his students is Chopin known to have
mentioned Mme Mauté. In a letter to Jacques
Durand from Paris, dated 27 January 1915, in
which he writes to his publisher about a new
edition of Chopin he is editing, Debussy says: ‘It
is unfortunate that Madame Mauté de Fleurville,
to whom I owe the little I know about the piano,
is dead. She knew so much about Chopin ...
We shall strive to work in his best interests.’
That he was very particular about the quality of
sound he drew from the piano, not to mention
the construction of the instrument itself, is
attested to by pianists and pedagogues such as
E. Robert Schmitz, Maurice Dumesnil and Alfred
Cortot. While he did not initiate a Debussian
‘school’ of pianism himself, the very nature of
his keyboard style calls for the creation of a
special kind of sonority.
Mme Mauté’s advice on pedalling is recalled in a
letter later the same year to Durand, but
otherwise is never referred to in writing by
Debussy himself. A reference to Mme Mauté
herself appears as part of a collection of
conversations between Victor Segalen and
Debussy. The following comment was made on
17 December 1908: ‘Ricardo Viñes [is] too cold –
I have heard only two fine pianists: [one of them
is] my former piano teacher, Mme Mauté, a
short, fat lady who plunged me straight away
Debussy’s first piano lessons, according to his
friend Louis Laloy, were with an old Italian
4
into Bach and who played him as he is never
played now, breathing life into the music (just
because Bach wore a wig, is that any reason to
make his music wear a wig as well?).’
unreliable memoirs that her own brother,
Charles de Sivry, was arrested for being a
communard in June 1871 and led off to Satory.
She adds without further explanation, “from this
time stems his acquaintance with Debussy’s
father”. We can, therefore, take it as plausible
that the former shopkeeper met the son of the
late ‘Marquis de Sivry’ in the dreadful courtyard
of Satory. He emptied his heart to him, and
Charles de Sivry spoke to him of his mother,
Mme Mauté de Fleurville, who he said had been
a pupil of Chopin. Full of solicitude, she visited
Mme de Bussy to listen to Achille’s attempts at
playing the piano and to get some idea of his
musical potential. She encouraged Mme de
Bussy to direct him towards a career as a
virtuoso, and she gave the child such a solid
preparation at the piano, and free of charge,
that he was ready to compete for a place in
the classes of the Paris Conservatoire on
22 October of the following year.’
Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), an acquaintance of
Debussy, who entered the Paris Conservatoire in
1896 and studied piano with Louis Diémer (a
pupil of Marmontel) recalls: ‘Until he informed
me of this fact one day, I was utterly unaware
that in his youth he had worked long at the
pianoforte with a pupil of Chopin’s (the name
escapes me), and he explained to me how
considerable a part this instruction had played in
his musical formation, not only as pianist but
also as creator.’
Edward Lockspeiser conjectures that the young
Debussy’s period of study with Mme Mauté
would have lasted from approximately 28 May
1871 to 22 October 1872 (when he gained
entrance to the Paris Conservatoire). Marcel
Dietschy is, however, circumspect about Mme
Mauté and her tutelage of the young Debussy.
Three important biographers of Debussy –
Dietschy, Lockspeiser and Vallas – all agree on
the fact that Mme Mauté recognised the young
Debussy’s talent and that her tutelage was gratis.
Dietschy gives the following account of Mme
Mauté in his discussion of Debussy’s early years:
There are, nevertheless, other aspects
concerning this extraordinary figure that
Debussy is more sceptical about which it is not
necessary to discuss here. A further reason for
the unwillingness of some biographers to accept
that Debussy studied with Mme Mauté, or even
more, that Mme Mauté studied with Chopin, is
that the memoirs of her daughter Mathilde (exMme Paul Verlaine) are too full of name-dropping
and dubieties for her following claim to be
accepted as indisputable: ‘My grandmother
‘In 1871 there appeared a third woman: the
mysterious Mme Mauté, surnamed de Fleurville.
Her daughter, Mathilde Verlaine, reveals in her
5
made [my mother, i.e. Mme Mauté] take
lessons with Chopin who perfected her talent;
it was with the composer himself that she
learnt to play his Polonaises and Impromptus
so beautifully.’
Debussy’s teacher at the Conservatoire was
Antoine-François Marmontel (1816–1898). He
was himself a pupil of Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume
Zimmermann (1785–1853), whose chair he took
over at the Paris Conservatoire. Marmontel’s
outlook, supposedly conservative, appears to
have remained rooted in the methods of his
teacher. Zimmermann himself had been a pupil
of Boildieu and in 1800 gained a premier prix at
the Conservatoire for piano playing, beating the
well-known pianist Kalkbrenner.
The supposed unreliability of the memoirs is
underlined by the fact that, if indeed Mathilde
Verlaine was to have indulged in name-dropping,
then it is surprising that she does not mention
someone of Debussy’s stature as having been
‘discovered’, as it were, by her mother.
Debussy’s early progress was, in Marmontel’s
opinion, promising. At the end of his first year of
study (1873), Marmontel commented: ‘A truly
artistic temperament; much can be expected of
him.’ A few months later, in July 1874, now aged
12, Debussy won a certificate of merit for his
performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F
minor. He won a second honourable mention for
this performance and the newspaper reviewer
spoke of ‘this little boy of 11, who exhibited a
degree of assurance and vigour that were quite
remarkable in a child of his age.’ Le temps
patronisingly remarked, ‘he obtained the second
honourable mention because to youth much
must be forgiven’.
If it can be questioned whether Mme Mauté had
lessons with Chopin, it can be safely assumed,
however, that she taught Debussy. As Dietschy
himself admits, one possible reason why
Mathilde Verlaine does not mention Debussy as
part of her memoirs could be that ‘her mother,
without Mathilde’s knowledge, went to the
Debussy’s flat at 59 bis rue Pigalle to give those
lessons.’ Dietschy also suggests that Debussy’s
lessons with Mme Mauté may have taken place
after he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire.
Yet if indeed Mme Mauté was to have guided
the young Debussy later in his career, who was
it then that prepared him for the entrance
examination to the Paris Conservatoire in 1872?
Certainly not Cerutti, in the opinion of Dietschy
and Vallas. The young Debussy, then aged ten,
would have needed to demonstrate a
considerable degree of aptitude and keyboard
fluency to have been chosen among 39 pupils
from a list of aspirants that numbered 157.
In 1875 he performed the Rondeau in E-flat,
Op. 16 and the Ballade in F major, Op. 38 of
Chopin as well as J.S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy,
BWV 903. Among the notices in the press of the
annual Conservatoire awards, Debussy was
6
described as ‘a 12-year-old prodigy who
promises to be a virtuoso of the first order’.
strong-willed and independent abound. It is
possible that even then, he did not enjoy playing
the piano music of Beethoven. Emmanuel
reports Debussy’s Beethoven playing as being
‘heavy’ and 25 years later, writing in La revue
blanche on 1 July 1901, Debussy himself opines:
‘The Sonatas of Beethoven are very badly
written for the piano and are really more like
orchestral transcriptions, especially the last
ones. Often they seem to require a third hand,
which I’m sure Beethoven intended, at least I
hope he did.’
At a public concert in Chauny, near SaintQuentin, Debussy accompanied the singer
Léontine Mendès and played the piano part of a
Haydn trio. This was his ‘official’ public debut and
the local newspaper, praising his ‘delightful
temperament’, went on to praise him: ‘De Bussy
[especially] ... whose small frame contains such
great courage ... will especially come back [to
Chauny]. What zest! What high spirits! What
genuine fire! No one can now say that the piano
is an unresponsive instrument, that vitality gets
lost in the vast distance between the striking
finger and the vibrating string, and that the
sound dies! This budding young Mozart is a
regular devil. When he puts his soul into the
piano, he puts his whole soul into the strings.’
The latter comment is indicative of a unique
nature in the young Debussy’s pianism. His
fellow student at the Conservatoire, Maurice
Emmanuel (1862-1938) reports clashes between
Marmontel and the young Debussy, the former a
strict disciplinarian, exceedingly meticulous and
exacting, the latter, not inclined to submit
himself to this discipline.
In 1877 Debussy won a second prize for his
performance of the first movement of
Schumann’s Piano Sonata in G minor. The editor
of the Journal de musique predicted that
Debussy would surely carry off the first prize at
the next competition, but thereafter it is
reported that the pianist’s playing supposedly
declined. For example, in 1879 his playing of the
Allegro from Weber’s Piano Sonata in A-flat,
J.199, and of Chopin’s Allegro de concert was
considered by La revue et gazette musicale as
‘progressing backwards’. It would not be
surprising if, at this point, Debussy had given up
the idea of being a virtuoso pianist, if he had
ever had that idea in the first place.
The following year (1876) Debussy played a
Beethoven sonata (probably Op. 111) and a
Rondo by Weber. The performances were
dismissed by Marmontel as ‘irresponsible and
muddle-headed’. Accounts of Debussy as being
Reminiscences by his fellow students, among
them Gabriel Pierné, Paul Vidal and Camille
Bellaigue, not to mention Maurice Emmanuel, all
attest to Debussy’s revolutionary, but far-fromperfect piano style. But what about Marmontel
7
Bernard, Georges Bizet, Ignacio Cervantes,
Louis Diémer, Théodore Dubois, Dominique
Ducharme, Jósef Dulęba, Victor Duvernoy, Justin
Elie, Alexis Fissot, Henri Ghis, Gabriel Pierné,
Francis Planté, Emile Waldteufel among them –
reveal several composers and pedagogues but
only two pianists of note, Diémer and Planté.
himself? Bellaigue comments: ‘He was a
patriarch of the piano. Perhaps he had at one
time been a virtuoso; he was now not even a
pianist. At any rate none of us had ever heard
him play. The most he would sometimes do, and
even this was difficult for him, was to play a run,
illustrate a fingering, or the value or accent of a
note, but it was done so clumsily that he himself
was the first to smile.’
Pierné writes: ‘I knew Debussy around 1873 at
the solfège class of Lavignac at the
Conservatoire ... His awkwardness and his lack
of tact were extraordinary. He was also shy and
unsociable. At the piano class of Marmontel he
astonished us by his bizarre performance.
Whether it was out of clumsiness or shyness I
do not know, but he literally charged at the
keyboard and overdid the effect. He seemed to
be consumed by a rage against the instrument,
ill-treating it with impulsive gestures and puffing
noisily in the difficult passages. These flaws
were slowly toned down and from time to time
he could obtain astonishing effects of sweet
sonority. These flaws and qualities made his
performances quite remarkable.’
Marmontel later summed up Debussy’s
prospects with the words, ‘he doesn’t care
much for the piano, but he does love music’.
In quite a different context, Emile Durand,
Debussy’s harmony professor, reported in 1878:
‘With his feeling for music and abilities as an
accompanist and sight-reader, Debussy would
be an excellent pupil if he were less sketchy and
less cavalier!’
Yet Marmontel, described as having a
conservative musical outlook, could be
contradictory. An apparently highly romanticised
performance of the F minor prelude of Bach
from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Book II, was
well received by Marmontel but severely
admonished by Ambroise Thomas, then head of
the Conservatoire. Yet, if one is to believe the
accounts of Camille Bellaigue and Lockspeiser,
which make out Marmontel to be both strictly
traditional in his approach as well as ill-equipped
as a pianist, can Debussy be entirely at fault for
not developing as a pianist? Further, an
examination of Marmontel’s other pupils – Emile
Several years later, in 1884, the composer had
apparently shed nothing of this presumably
‘revolutionary’ approach to the keyboard. His
fellow student Maurice Emmanuel recounts an
incident that year, when a group of students
were waiting for their professor, Léo Delibes, in
vain. Just as they were about to leave the class,
Debussy appeared, exclaiming, ‘Dear orphans, in
the absence of your family I will feed you.’
8
a misty fluidity whose secret he alone knew. No
pianist before him employed the pedals
alternately or simultaneously with so much tact
and skill. With most modern virtuosos,
excessive, continuous use of the pedal is a
capital defect, producing sonorities eventually
tiring and irritating to the delicate ear. Chopin, on
the contrary, while making constant use of the
pedal, obtained ravishing harmonies, melodic
whispers that charmed and astonished. A
wonderful poet of the piano, he had a way of
understanding, of feeling and expressing his
ideas which others, with very few exceptions,
have often tried to imitate without achieving
anything more than clumsy parodies. If we draw
a parallel between Chopin’s sound effects and
certain techniques of painting, we could say that
this great virtuoso modulated sound much as
skilled painters treat light and atmosphere. To
envelop melodic phrases and ingenious
arabesques in a half-tint which has something of
both dream and reality: that is the pinnacle of
art; and this was Chopin’s art.’
Sitting down at the piano, Debussy ‘broke into a
riot of chords which, despite their abnormality,
we had to admire, open mouthed. And there
were shimmering, bizarre arpeggios, rumbling
trills played by both hands on three notes
simultaneously, series of indescribable harmonic
sequences ... For more than an hour he held us
spellbound around the piano, his shock of
tousled hair shaking as he played like a fanatic ...’
Yet comments made by Debussy in his later
years certainly reveal a substantial knowledge of
piano technique. Even if, as Dietschy suggests,
Mme Mauté’s acquaintance with Chopin was
through having heard Chopin play or her
familiarity with certain of the composer’s
recommendations, is this not adequate to
transmit to a pupil? Further, if the area of Mme
Mauté’s pianistic heritage is questionable, the
conjecture that Debussy’s acquaintance with
Chopin’s pianism might have come from
Marmontel has never been addressed.
Speaking of Chopin, Marmontel says: ‘As
regards to evenness of fingers, delicacy, perfect
independence of the hands, Chopin clearly
belonged to the school of Clementi, whose
excellent studies he always recommended and
appreciated. But where Chopin was entirely
himself was in his marvellous way of leading
and modulating the sound, in his expressive,
wistful way of colouring it. He had a completely
individual manner of touching the keyboard – a
supple, mellow touch, creating sound effects of
It is interesting to note that Marmontel’s
comments on Chopin are uncannily similar to
these on the art of Debussy. While Marmontel
did not study with Chopin, he lived very near the
composer’s home at the Square d’Orléans. In
1859, as part of his École classique du piano
(Paris: Heugel) he published four volumes of
selected Chopin works. Isn’t it possible, even
likely, that regardless of the fact that Debussy
9
does not mention the Chopin-Marmontel link –
that Marmontel would have passed on his
knowledge of Chopin playing to the young
pianist?
In his review of Debussy’s piano music, Alfred
Cortot confirms: ‘... his circle of friends used to
take pleasure in saying that he played the piano
like Chopin. And, in fact, his touch was exquisite,
unforced, gentle and hazy, ideal for subtle
shading and intimacy, no clashes or breaks; he
used the pedal and especially the combination of
pedals with consummate skill and, like Chopin,
he liked the action of his keyboard to be gentle
to the point of being slack.’
After all, Paul Vidal, a student at the
Conservatoire and winner of the Prix de Rome in
1883 (the year before Debussy won it) reports:
‘During the years before his journeys to Russia
and Vienna [in 1881 and 1882] which revealed
new horizons to him, Debussy’s tastes were
largely formed by the repertoire of Marmontel’s
class. There was considerable emphasis on Chopin
and Schumann, for whom Debussy had a special
affection, and a great deal of Stephen Heller and
[Charles] Valentin Alkan was also played.’
It is significant to note that in January 1915,
shortly after composing the Études (which he
dedicated to Chopin), Debussy embarked on one
of his last major non-compositional projects –
that of editing Chopin’s piano works for Durand.
Marmontel’s recollections (noted above) of
characteristics such as Chopin’s varied use of the
pedals, parallels drawn between his music and
contemporary painting, the fine line between
dream and reality in his music and his use of
demi-teinte in his playing are often referred to in
accounts of Debussy’s own pianism.
Vidal also comments on Debussy’s own pianism:
‘His highly interesting style of playing was not
faultless, pianistically speaking: he found it
difficult to play trills but, on the other hand, his
left hand was extraordinarily supple and had a
huge span. His talents as a pianist emerged
during the years to come, in Bazille’s
accompaniment class, where he really stood out.’
may only be realised on an upright piano with a
non-resistant action. In this regard, he made the
following comment about the Prélude ‘Les fées
sont d’exquises danseuses’: ‘Debussy’s piano
spoke the moment one touched it, no matter
how lightly. On grand pianos it is necessary to
press down the key to some extent before
playing, otherwise the result is too heavy or too
precise and clear cut.’
that ‘it was like nobody else’s’. Speaking of
Debussy’s piano compositions he does qualify
that the composer was slow to bring to his
piano music the innovations that distinguish his
early orchestral music and songs, citing titles of
some of the early piano pieces (e.g. Tarantelle
styrienne and Ballade slave) as conjuring up
titillating, charming salons. According to Nichols,
it is not until the 1894 Images (published
posthumously as Images oubliées) that Debussy
began to establish a unique voice.
Similarly, Maurice Dumesnil recounts a piano
lesson with the composer, when he played for
him his ‘Clair de lune’ from Suite bergamasque.
Referring to the middle section, Debussy
advised that the ‘left hand arpeggios should be
fluid, mellow, drowned in pedal, as if played by a
harp on a background of strings’.
Emile Vuillermoz (1878-1960), a Paris
Conservatoire graduate and a pupil of Fauré, had
met Debussy on occasion and in his biography
of the composer draws a link between
Debussy’s compositional procedures and the
composer’s own performance style: ‘He
obtained sonorities from the piano which
softened the angles and asperities generated by
his forward-looking inspiration. He had
discovered the exact finger technique to suit his
harmonic system ... Debussy’s playing was one
long harmony lesson.’
In discussing the unique nature of Debussy’s
own pianism, and correspondingly, the approach
it requires, it is necessary not only to consider
contemporary accounts of the composer’s
pianism but also to examine the musical lineage
of those who perform his music in this century.
In this way one might examine the
characteristics of a ‘school’ of pianism to which
they might belong.
II. Towards a Debussian Sonority
It seems indisputable that through his strikingly
original compositions, Debussy forged new
paths in musical style and performance.
Obviously, this innovative style in composition
and the resulting new demands in performance
are so inextricably linked that it is difficult to
discuss one without the other. In a discussion of
Debussy’s pianism, Roger Nichols concludes
It would be reasonable to suggest that during
the years 1872-1879, while at the Conservatoire,
Debussy was also at an age (10-17) when he
was more capable of absorbing pedagogical
dicta than he would have been at the age of
nine, when it is conjectured he studied with
Mme Mauté.
10
Accounts by his contemporaries suggest an
orchestral quality in his playing. Alfred Cortot
when speaking of Masques and L’isle joyeuse
refers to the ‘orchestral pianism’ of these pieces,
justifying the terminology by saying, ‘we lack a
phrase to define more exactly the diverse
combination of timbres which enliven them with
a fantastic brilliance.’ On the subject of pianos,
Cortot suggests that certain Debussian effects
Debussy himself was at one time so interested
in pedagogy that he thought of writing a piano
method of his own. He considered those in
existence unsatisfactory, uninspiring, tedious
and mechanical. As well as present-day recorded
performances, it is equally central to our
11
understanding to examine the various styles of
Debussian pianism as revealed on piano roll
performances made during Debussy’s lifetime.
‘One must forget that the piano has hammers’
was a concern Debussy expressed to many
regarding his piano music. He created sonorities
that were then unique in French piano music and
his attitude to performance of his works is well
attested to in articles published by those who
studied with him, George Copeland, Maurice
Dumesnil, E. Robert Schmitz and Marguerite
Long being among them. Long spent extensive
periods studying with Debussy, and her book
At the Piano with Debussy makes frequent
reference to the precise contribution of rhythm,
timbre, colour and precision in performance.
The beauty of natural phenomena held a lifelong
fascination for Debussy who once professed his
‘religion de la mystérieuse nature’ and it is well
known that a number of his works take their
inspiration from nature. In an interview with
Henri Malherbe in February 1911 for the
Excelsior magazine, he said: The whole expanse
of nature is reflected in my own sincere but
feeble soul. Around me the branches of the
trees reach out towards the firmament, here are
the sweet-scented flowers smiling in the
meadow, here the soft earth is carpeted with
sweet herbs ... And, unconsciously, my hands
are clasped in prayer ... Nature invites its
ephemeral and trembling travellers to experience
these wonderful and disturbing spectacles – that
is what I call prayer.’
Describing Debussy’s last public appearance as
a pianist, André Suarès (a writer and a friend of
Romain Rolland) makes reference to ‘his round,
supple, plump hand, a rather strong, episcopal
hand, [which] hung heavy on his arm’ and
describes his playing on that occasion as ‘an
incantation, the most immaterial music, with the
greatest nuances one has ever heard. He didn’t
realise sonority as a pianist, never as a musician,
but as a poet.’ Marguerite Long concurs with the
opinion of Suarès, and when referring to ‘Reflets
dans l’eau’ states that ‘no one equals Debussy
as a poet of water’. Equally, as will be seen in
the ensuing discussion of the Préludes, he may
be described as a poet of the air.
While the scores do go to some length to
communicate the composer’s wishes, the
absence of certain indications, such as pedalling
instructions and fingering, leave it up to the
performer to make judicious decisions on the
matter in which Debussy’s sonorities can be
realised. Although his piano music demands
great technical control, Debussy despised
virtuosic display for its own sake. Commenting
on this to Marguerite Long, he said, ‘the fifth
finger of virtuosi, what a pest it is!’ He was
implying that performers often attached too
much importance to a melodic line at the
expense of harmony. He considered these two
aspects of music as an entity and stressed that
12
neither should be emphasised to the neglect of
the other.
on a pianist’s interpretation of a passage of his
music which the pianist thought should be ‘free’,
Marguerite Long recounts Debussy as having
said: ‘There are some who write music, some
who edit it, and there is that gentleman who
does what he pleases.’ I asked him what he said
at the time. Scornfully he remarked: ‘Oh,
nothing. I looked at the carpet but he will never
tread on it again.’
Marguerite Long stresses the synthesis of polar
opposites in the playing of Debussy’s piano
music, ‘gentleness in force ... force in
gentleness’, and, as such, one can safely advise
‘tension in relaxation, relaxation in tension’ as a
complementary guideline in the approach to the
piano music of Debussy.
Clearly, Debussy was concerned about the
exactitude with which he wished to have his
works performed. Apart from pedalling and
fingering, detail is scarcely lacking in the scores,
and he was very annoyed with performers who
chose to alter his instructions. Marguerite Long
recounts Debussy’s instruction to her when
studying the ‘Toccata’ from Pour le piano: ‘Four
semiquavers means four semiquavers. The
hands are not meant to hover in the air over the
piano but to enter it.’ Yet later, in 1917, Long
recounts an incident when a ‘famous pianist’
(unidentified) performed Pour le piano in the
presence of the composer. Sufficiently
impressed, she asked the composer for his
opinion on the performance, to which came the
reply: ‘Dreadful. He didn’t miss a note.’
Debussy rarely spoke about the interpretation of
his own works and the only substantial
comment known to have been made by him on
the use of the pedal, so central to the Debussian
aesthetic, is to be found in letters to Jacques
Durand. A letter from Paris dated 1 September
1915 says: ‘... I have very clear memories of
what Mme Mauté de Fleurville told me. He
(Chopin) recommended practising without pedal
and, in performance, not holding it on except in
very rare instances. It was the same way of
turning the pedal into a kind of breathing which I
observed in Liszt when I had the chance to hear
him in Rome. The plain truth perhaps is that the
abuse of the pedal is only a means of covering
up a lack of technique, and thus it is necessary
to make a lot of noise to prevent people from
hearing the music which is being slaughtered! In
theory we should be able to find a graphic
means of representing this “breathing” pedal ...
it wouldn’t be impossible.’
What of Debussy’s own performances? His own
recordings on Welte-Mignon piano rolls are of
limited value in assessing the finer points of his
pianism as the original mechanical processes
were ill-equipped to register half-pedal and
flutter-pedalling which so vastly contribute to the
Curiously, what Debussy said and what he did
were at odds. Recounting Debussy’s comments
13
tempo relationships within the piece (adopted in
this recording and discussed below).
Debussian sonority. While Debussy’s concern
that his wishes, as indicated in the scores
should be meticulously adhered to, his own
performances reveal departures from the printed
score. Writing about these in his liner notes for
the CD recording of the piano rolls, Denis
Condon says: ‘While preparing his new edition
of Debussy’s piano music for Durand, Roy
Howat made an extensive study of these rolls
and concluded that, in almost every case where
Debussy’s performance on the roll differed from
the printed score, the roll seemed to offer the
more logical version of the music.’ The
recordings have drawn enormous criticism for
their rather lackadaisical approach and their
scarce attention to details of rhythm and nuance.
It is, however, documented that the year in
which he made these recordings was a
particularly trying period in his life. He was
greatly in debt and hence took up performing
concerts, and the problem was further
compounded by his wife whose extravagant
lifestyle he could ill afford.
Debussy seldom played in public. But when he
did, at the Société Nationale or the Concerts
Durand, it was an excellent demonstration of his
principles. Once, at the Salle Erard, he played
several of his Préludes. Dumesnil reports that
‘as usual, an attendant raised the lid of the
concert grand. But when Debussy came on, the
first thing he did was to lower the lid. “C’était
pour mieux noyer le son,” he said. Drown the
tone ... how wonderfully he did just that in “La
cathédrale engloutie”. It was unforgettable.’
Evidence of this characteristic is further provided
by George Copeland (an American pianist,
largely responsible for introducing Debussy’s
music to the United States) when he played for
Debussy at the composer’s home: ‘I asked
permission to move the vase, so that I might
open the piano cover. “Absolument non!” he
replied, with obvious annoyance. “Do not touch
it! I never permit that anyone should open my
piano. As it is, everyone plays my music too loud.”’
Wherein lies the value of his performances?
Foremost, it is in their avoidance of giving too
much importance to an outer voice at the
expense of the harmony, seen at its best in
‘Danseuses de Delphes’. The weighting of
chords and its ramifications in the production of
colour is also true of ‘La cathédrale engloutie’,
but the performance of this piece is even more
valuable for its incorporation of some significant
Given this attention to the subtlety of nuance
and shading, it is interesting to survey the kinds
of pianos Debussy himself played. At various
times in his life he owned a Bechstein upright, a
Pleyel, a Gaveau, and much later, a Blüthner
concert grand. None of these was installed with
a sostenuto (‘middle’) pedal, but the Blüthner,
which he rented while living in Bournemouth
14
suppleness, the caress of his touch? While
floating over the keys with a curiously
penetrating gentleness, he could achieve an
extraordinary power of expression. There lay his
secret, the pianistic enigma of his music. There
lay Debussy’s individual technique; gentleness in
continuous pressure gave the colour that only he
could get from his piano. He played mostly in
half-tint, but, like Chopin, without any hardness
of attack.’ Maurice Dumesnil advocates the use
of the sustaining pedal in rapid passage-work to
achieve this diaphanous sonority and George
Copeland tells us that this characteristic sound
was ‘induced by an almost continuous use of
overlapping pedals, raising the foot a fraction
from the damper pedal and depressing it again
almost immediately to preserve the continuity’.
and subsequently shipped to Paris, he prized
highly. It was installed with an extra string above
each of the standard ones. While these extra
strings were never touched by the hammers,
they vibrated sympathetically, thus increasing
the richness of the sonority. Perhaps one reason
for Debussy’s fondness for the sonority
produced by his Blüthner can be found in
George Copeland’s account of the composer’s
extraordinarily acute sense of aural perception:
‘Musically, Debussy felt himself to be a kind of
auditory “sensitive”. He not only heard sounds
that no other ear was able to register, but he
found a way of expressing things that are not
customarily said. He had an almost fanatical
conviction that a musical score does not begin
with the composer, but that it emerges out of
space, through centuries of time, passes before
him, and goes on, fading into the distance (as it
came) with no sense of finality.’
There can be little argument that the performer’s
ear will be the ultimate guide. The manner and
extent to which the pedals are deployed will
naturally be dictated largely by the size and
acoustical properties of the performing venue.
But it should also be based on a knowledge of
Debussy’s orchestral writing, and guided by
what the figuration of a passage reveals in terms
of texture, timbre, sonority and atmosphere.
While it is necessary, therefore, to recreate
Debussy’s sound ideal by use of the una corda
and sustaining pedals, the use of the sostenuto
pedal must remain speculative. On the other
hand, evidence suggests that a brittle clarity
should be avoided. Debussy was never an
advocate of digital velocity as a means of
display, but rather, as a means of achieving
lightness and luminosity. Marguerite Long
substantiates these ideas in her description of
Debussy as pianist: ‘Debussy was an
incomparable pianist. How could one forget his
The intangible beauty of his music sometimes
hides his more esoteric attributes. When
researching his music some years ago, Roy
Howat found that several of his works were
intricately constructed around the exact
15
III. Préludes – Books I & II
proportion of the ‘golden section’ used by Greek
architects, and long regarded in esoteric circles
as having divine properties and also prominent in
nature. Yet it is a tribute to his skill that the
structural techniques he might have incorporated
never allowed his music to sound anything less
than spontaneous. He expresses his point
eloquently in an article he wrote for the journal
Musica in May 1903: ‘Music is a mysterious
mathematical process whose elements share
something of the nature of Infinity. It is allied to
the movement of the waters, to the play of
curves described by the changing breezes.
Nothing is more musical than a sunset! For,
anyone who can be moved by what they see
can learn the greatest lessons in development
here. That is to say, they can read them in
Nature’s book – a book not well enough known
among musicians, who tend to read nothing but
their own books about what the Masters have
said, respectfully stirring the dust on their
works. All very well, but perhaps Art goes
deeper than this.’
Very little is to be found in Debussy’s
correspondence about the progress of the
Préludes, when suddenly we encounter a
passing remark about them in a letter to his
publisher Jacques Durand which says, ‘Les
“Préludes” sont terminés.’ The correspondence
was dated 5 February 1910 and less than ten
weeks later the first twelve Préludes were
issued in print. The set was well received and
the second book (of twelve) was issued in 1913.
It is worth noting that the titles for the Préludes
were added after they were written, and are
therefore more reflections on the music than a
point of departure.
Book I
Danseuses de Delphes (Delphic Dancers)
functions like an invitation to the piano,
beckoning pianist and listener to feel the air swirl
around themselves. Set as a dignified, grave
sarabande, it unfolds as a serene and mysterious
rite at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The title,
according to Alfred Cortot and Léon Vallas,
comes from a Greek sculpture, or perhaps an
engraving of one (now on display at the Louvre)
which portrays a ritual dance by three
bacchantes, the air currents sending waves
through their robes as they turn.
Perhaps the very roots of Debussy’s genius lay
in his ability to hear music in all he saw or read.
As Roy Howat points out, ‘for him the
clairaudient perceptions from between the
poetic lines, from the painting, the sunset or the
storm, were more of a reality than was an
everyday world with which he never quite came
to terms’.
Voiles (Sails or Veils) continues the theme of air
currents through its essentially whole-tone
16
Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire. The piece’s
tonality is centred around A major and its
melodic line occurs in several voices. Its suavity
is suggested by Debussy in his opening
instruction, ‘harmonious and supple’. In the sun’s
dying rays nostalgic and poetic evocations flit
through the evening air (note, yet another
Prélude evoking air currents). A melancholy waltz
also appears, but does little to cheer up the
curious atmosphere.
setting. It evokes sails as witnessed on a
becalmed sea – sailing boats anchored to a fixed
pedal-point, if you like – only momentarily
aroused when the whole-tone idea is broken by
a pentatonic passage. For Cortot it represents
‘the flight of a white wing over the crooning sea
towards the horizon bright with the setting sun’.
Edgar Varèse (composer, friend of Debussy and
cousin of Cortot), on the other hand, reports that
the piece was meant to represent the diaphanous
veils of the dancer Loïe Fuller, at the time well
known to Parisian audiences. It is an ambiguity
Debussy would have no doubt enjoyed.
Les collines d’Anacapri (The Hills of Anacapri) is
in turn extrovert and piquant. The piece’s vital,
‘open air’ feeling points to an evocation of
Anacapri, a small town on the isle of Capri, but
rumour has it that Debussy drew the title from
the label of a bottle of Anacapri wine. It carries
the vitality of a tarantella – amorous, provocative
and nonchalant – and is punctuated by an
idiomatic Neapolitan song, as well as the sound
of bells. The last bars are made up of a brilliant
arpeggio marked fff.
Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain)
depicts a dry wind blowing across the vast
expanse of the plain. Its momentum grows as
the piece progresses, when suddenly its
progress is halted. But the pause is a trick, for
the wind picks up again, lashes sinisterly at the
surrounding landscape, only to vanish with one
last murmur. The technique used is a reversal of
that in ‘Voiles’, with the whole-tone idea this
time used centrally while the pentatonic idea
opens and closes the piece. The title is drawn
from a line by the 18th-century poet SimonCharles Favart.
Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the Snow) is
one of Debussy’s most desolate, intense
creations, according to E. Robert Schmitz ‘not at
all [evocative of] childlike glee in a winter scene
evoking snowballs, sledges or the Christmas
seasons’. According to Debussy, its basic rhythm
was to have ‘the aural value of a melancholy,
snowbound landscape’. It is conceived on three
levels: an underpinning ostinato, a sighing
melody and stealthy pedal points. For some, its
‘Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air
du soir’ (‘Sounds and Scents Swirl in the
Evening Air’) draws its title from the third line of
Baudelaire’s poem ‘Harmonie du soir’, which
Debussy had set in 1889 as the second of his
17
like Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper, her song is
recalled ‘long after it is heard no more’.
ostinato and overall overcast mood is not only
indicative of Debussy’s own occasional
loneliness, but a wellspring for the solitariness
of all mankind.
La sérénade interrompue (The Interrupted
Serenade) depicts strumming guitars, Moorish
melodies and Spanish rhythms. It is one of
several Spanish character pieces in Debussy’s
piano music. Manuel de Falla’s comment that
Debussy seemed to write better Spanish music
than any Spaniard had been able to is
noteworthy, and the word ‘interrompue’
contributes to the special character of the piece.
Its humour is depicted in the form of various
interruptions suffered by the amorous serenader,
in the form of splashes of water from balconies,
slamming windows, flying flowerpots (or
whatever), until the serenader, fed up, gives up
and toddles off.
Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest (What the West
Wind Saw) is an elemental portrayal of an
Atlantic storm and the West Wind, fearsome,
destructive yet magnificently imposing and
terrifyingly exalted. It is heavily indicated with
not only a vast range of dynamic markings, but
also instructions such as ‘plaintive and in the
distance’, ‘fast and furious’, ‘animated and
tumultuous’. A sinister opening motif in the
lower reaches of the keyboard soon twists itself
into a destructive being; diminished chords are
hurled like rocks and the wind screams in high
C-sharps over Debussy’s violent landscape. The
title comes (surprisingly) from Hans Christian
Andersen’s tale The Garden of Paradise in which
the West Wind recounts his exploits.
La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)
draws its title from a Breton legend depicting
the submerged city of Ys (birthplace of Isolde)
whose cathedral spires and monks’ chants can
be discerned emerging from the sea on misty
mornings. Modal and pentatonic ideas, organum
in parallel fourths and fifths contribute to the
piece’s archaic, solemn yet imposingly resonant
quality. Those familiar with Debussy’s own
performance of this piece (on a Welte-Mignon
roll no. 2738, transferred to CD and now
available as part of the Condon Collection,
Dolphin/Larrikin – CD DDC 933) will note that
bars 7-12 and 22-83 are played at double the
La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the
Flaxen Hair) restores the calm with a simple,
open-hearted song as the young Scottish lass of
Leconte de Lisle’s Chansons écossaises sings in
the morning sunshine. The poem had been set
to music by Debussy in 1882, and in itself was
probably inspired by Robert Burns’ Lass with the
Lint-White Locks. The music has that floating
evanescence of such works as Debussy’s earlier
cantata La damoiselle élue and such is its
memorability that, as Bryce Morrison points out,
18
speed of the remainder. Roy Howat (Debussy in
Proportion, Cambridge University Press, 1983)
discusses certain ambiguities in the score and
explains that this change is logical for it results
in the continuity of the triple metre at all tempo
transitions. The present recording incorporates
the appropriate tempo changes.
Book II
Brouillards (Mists) is sinister evocation of
overcast skies and air redolent with heaviness
and sadness. The desolation is interrupted by a
central outburst and a concluding evocation of
icicles perhaps, with flashing but fragile upward
treble figurations. Debussy achieves this eerie
atmosphere by means of polytonality, and it is
one of his most potent realisations of that
suspension between heaven and earth, that
helpless feeling of being imprisoned in a
calm cocoon.
La danse de Puck (Puck’s Dance) is a
mischievous caricature of Shakespeare’s ‘joyous
nomad of the night’ in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, fleet of foot and capriciously teasing.
Debussy’s title was probably inspired by Arthur
Rackham’s illustration to a 1908 edition of
Shakespeare’s play, although Howat conjectures
that Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Puck’ stories may also
have been a stimulus. The piece’s main
components are a sprightly dotted rhythm, fairy
fanfares and a final upward rush as the elf
vanishes into thin air.
Feuilles mortes (Autumn Leaves) probably lifts
its titles from a volume of poems by Debussy’s
friend Gabriel Mourey, entitled Voix éparses:
adagios, feuilles mortes, croquis rêves (1883). It
depicts the falling of leaves in the sadness of
autumn and one can hear the exact picture in
the first five bars of the piece: the wind sighs
through the leaves and a few leaves flutter sadly
to the ground. The autumnal rite is perhaps a
depiction of the fragility of life itself, with its
mood of static expectancy and past regrets.
Minstrels is not, as Schmitz claims, an
‘American scene and one of its rich Negro
heritages’, but actually a snapshot from a holiday
in Eastbourne in the summer of 1905, when
Debussy witnessed a troupe of musical clowns
with corked faces who performed in front of the
Grand Hotel. The piece has a purposely odd gait,
imitates banjo-like figures, tiny blares from
trumpets and indulges in a slosh of
sentimentality – all contributing to a hilarious,
impulsive finish to the first book of Préludes.
La puerta del Vino is significantly marked ‘with
sudden oppositions of extreme violence and
impassioned tenderness’ and carries an allpervasive, sometimes jerky habañera rhythm.
The title is said to be drawn from either a
postcard from Falla or one from Ricardo Viñes
depicting the imposing Moorish gate at the
Alhambra in Granada.
19
‘Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses’ (‘Fairies
are Exquisite Dancers’) is an ephemeral rondo
which moves quickly from a dance that is fleet
of foot to passages of lyrical allure. It has a
classical dignity and grace but always a twinkle
in the eye. The title comes from an illustration by
Arthur Rackham to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in
Kensington Gardens (a copy of which Robert
Godet had sent to Debussy’s daughter
Chouchou for Christmas in 1912) and depicts a
fairy dancing with a grasshopper on a single
strand of a spider’s web as the spider plays the
cello in a corner. Debussy includes a delicious
quotation from a Brahms waltz, but quotes its
alto part rather than the main (upper) theme.
has soldiered all his life’, and the music has a
characteristically awkward, puppet-like gait. The
San Francisco Chronicle reported him as ‘a tall
man ... at least nine feet high’! Here we
encounter Debussy etching as sharply as
Stravinsky: the tiny opening fanfare has a
distinct resemblance to Petrushka, which had
been produced in Paris the year before. Lavine’s
act is supposed to have included playing the
piano with his toes and juggling on a tightrope.
His American heritage is acknowledged through
a quotation of Stephen Foster’s The Camptown
Races. The piece is meant to be played ‘in the
rhythm of a cakewalk’.
La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune
(The Terrace for Moonlight Audiences) probably
draws its title from an article about India by
René Puaux which appeared in Le Temps
(December 1912) and described the Durbar
ceremonies for the coronation of King George V,
then Emperor of India. It speaks of ‘the hall of
victory, the hall of pleasure, the garden of the
Sultans, the terrace for moonlight audiences ...’
It is almost somnambulistic, opening with a
repeated chordal motive over which descends an
‘ethereal chromatic arabesque’. The music
seems to be an extension of the composer’s
own refined inner world. Cortot sums up the
piece’s ephemeral nature with the words, ‘this
dream picture, this fanciful terrace may
disappear at any moment’.
Bruyères (Heather) could be seen as the lyrical
twin of La fille aux cheveux de lin, a painting of a
calm pastoral scene. Schmitz sees in it a rustic
and nostalgic quality and is reminded of Paris
exhibitions between the years 1900 and 1914
which featured repeated appearances of the
work of a Parisian who depicted hilly landscapes
at sunset – blond wheat in the foreground,
lavender heather above it. Given the simplicity
and innocence of the music, its almost classical
elegance, it is worth recalling Debussy’s
instruction to Maggie Teyte who sang the role of
Mélisande: ‘Sing it as if it were Mozart.’
Général Lavine – excentric was billed during
his appearances at the Marigny Theatre (1910
and 1912) as ‘General Ed Lavine, the Man who
20
Ondine is the water nymph of Scandinavian
mythology who entices unwary passers-by into
her deep blue crystal palace. She is, for Cortot,
‘streaming, tempting and naked’. The various
‘water motifs’ are represented via flitting,
darting capricious figures. A satirical episode
and a dancing one momentarily interrupt the
fluidity of the piece. She may not be as sensual
as Ravel’s portrayal in Gaspard de la nuit, but,
like the latter, she vanishes from sight over a
brief pianistic flutter.
chromatic motives. Through its very starkness,
the composer achieves a sadness and
eloquence, and the piece has been seen as the
spiritual twin of Des pas sur la neige in Book I of
the Préludes.
Les tierces alternées (Alternating Thirds) is the
only Prélude without a picturesque title, and
Debussy perhaps felt that the writing was selfexplanatory and the piece needed no extramusical association. It is interesting, though, to
speculate whether there might be a connection
between this piece, which demands laser-like
virtuosity, and an undated remark made by
Debussy in one of his note books: ‘Pour le
deuxieme l[ivre] de Préludes “Paganini”! (dans la
technique du violon)’ [For the second book of
Preludes ‘Paganini’! (in the manner of his violin
technique)]. It also contains a quotation from
Le sacre du printemps which Debussy had sightread earlier with Stravinsky. Calling for a
suppleness and clarity, it looks forward to the
Études that were to come and has been
appropriately described as ‘a static whirling
consuming itself in its own gyration’ – in this
respect rather similar to ‘Mouvement’ from the
first set of piano Images.
Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C. is a
slight variant of Charles Dickens’ title for
Pickwick: Dickens called him ‘General Chairman
– Member’, for Debussy he was ‘Perpetual
President – Member Pickwick Club’. Here is
another caricature, opening with a garish
statement of ‘God Save the King’, but then
painting a quaint picture of the hero, Sam
Pickwick, with his various moods – benevolent,
somewhat superior and absent-minded. The
Prélude calls for a large dynamic range,
contrasts of attack, but always retains its
tongue-in-cheek flavour.
Canope was the ancient Egyptian city whose
name was then used for ‘Canopic jars’, the tops
of ritual funerary urns, two of which Debussy
kept on his work table. According to Schmitz,
the music describes not so much the objects as
the ritualistic ceremonials associated with them.
Parallel chords, modally treated, open the work,
now and then interrupted by plaintive, pleading
Feux d’artifice (Fireworks) is alive and vibrant
with showers of sparks, the slow, parabolic
descent of stars and the scintillating rockets
which vibrate momentarily in the night sky. The
structure of the piece, too, could be seen as a
21
picturesque realisation of the event (or vice
versa): a slow ascent reaching a climax, from
which descends, almost vertically, a rapid line.
The quiet quotation of La Marseillaise seems to
corroborate the idea that this is a Bastille Day
celebration, and with a final spiral of smoke the
scene vanishes before our eyes and ears,
marking the end of the Préludes with ‘a
nostalgic au revoir to a gregarious holiday’.
Duncan Gifford
Australian pianist
Duncan Gifford has
firmly established
himself as a major
artist of his generation.
His recent international
successes include
First Prize in the Maria
Callas Grand Prix de
Piano in Athens,
Greece (2000), First Prize in the Concours Prix
Mozart in Lausanne, Switzerland (1999) and First
Prize, as well as the Beethoven and Chopin Prizes,
in the prestigious José Iturbi International Piano
Competition in Spain (1998).
Cyrus Meher-Homji
Other competition successes have included First
Prize in the World Piano Competition in
Cincinnati (1989), Third Prize in the Sydney
International Piano Competition (1992), Third
Prize in the Montreal International Piano
Competition (1996) and Fourth Prize in the
Dublin International Piano Competition (1994).
Born in 1972, Duncan Gifford commenced piano
studies at the age of six. He subsequently
studied with Margaret Hair at the Sydney
Conservatorium of Music, later moving to the
Moscow State Conservatory for six years as a
student of Lev Vlassenko and Dmitri Sakharov,
graduating with a Master’s Degree in Piano
22
Performance. Since 1997, Duncan Gifford been
based in Madrid where he is working with
Joaquín Soriano.
Executive Producer (Walsingham Classics)
Geoff Weule
Executive Producers (ABC Classics)
Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan
Recording Producer Ralph Lane
Recording Engineer Paul McGrath
Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb
Booklet Editor Richard King
Cover Painting John Peter Russell
Storm, Belle Ile, 1905 watercolour, gouache on
heavy wove buff paper, 25.5 x 32.5cm
Jean Cameron Gordon Bequest Fund in memory
of her mother Mary Gordon, 2000
Collection: Art Gallery of NSW
Photograph: Diana Panuccio for AGNSW
Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd
Piano Steinway
He has given many recitals internationally,
including in Australia, Russia, Germany,
Switzerland, Spain, Italy, the US, Ireland, Japan,
New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and New
Caledonia. He has performed as soloist with the
Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Symphony
Orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra,
Orchestre de la Camerata Mozart of Rome, the
National Orchestra of Ireland, the Metropolitan
Orchestra of Montreal, the National Orchestras
of Malaysia and Taiwan, the Orchestra of Malaga,
Spain, and with the Australian Youth Orchestra
for both their 1993 New Zealand tour and 1994
European tour.
Recorded on 5 & 6 September 1994 at the Eugene
Goossens Hall of the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation’s Ultimo Centre, Sydney.
In his orchestral appearances, Duncan Gifford
has worked with many conductors, including
Vernon Handley, Yakov Kreizberg, Paul Daniel,
En Shao, Patrick Thomas and Edvard Tchivzhel.
1994 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
1994, 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved.
Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or
broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright
owner is prohibited.
In 1993 he released his first CD, featuring the
music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. His
recording on this CD of the complete Debussy
Préludes received great critical acclaim when it
was first released in 1995 and was nominated
for an ARIA Award for Best Classical Album.
23