Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 02/05/2008, uploaded on 01/27/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Pagodes, from Estampes          Claude Debussy

"If one cannot afford to travel, one substitutes the imagination."  Thus wrote Claude Debussy in 1903 about Estampes, his newly composed set of three pieces for piano.  Given Debussy's Impressionist and Symbolist leanings and the power of music in particular to transport the listener, it is not surprising that this lighthearted comment would accompany these three "postcards" (a very loose translation of the title of the piece) from disparate locations spanning the globe.

We are transported to the Far East and to Spain in the first two movements, respectively, as seen through a French lens of rippling Pentatonic scales (Pagodes - Pagodas) and vibrant Habanera rhythms (La soirée dans Grenade - Evening in Grenada).  The final piece in the set, Jardins sous la Pluie - Gardens in the Rain, was apparently inspired by a scene described by the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche as he painted a portrait of the composer one rainy afternoon: "I was in Auteuil, out of doors, and sketched an initial study of his head.  It started to rain, and the trees gave his face a greenish tinge which the rain seemed to cover as though with enamel."      Michael Mizrahi

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.