Review for the Debussy series CHAN 10421, 10467, 10443, 10497 & 10545

"Debussy playing does not come any better than this, and anyone starting to collect this excellent Chandos series need not really look any further. The CDs are available separately each in turn was given a ’Gramophone Award"

 

“…I am convinced by his [Bavouzet] performances that this is all legitimate piano music by one of the 20th Century’s great masters, heretofore almost unkown, and now presented with Chandos’s top production values and recording techniques. There is not another pianist more suitable or capable of bringing this music to light.”
 

**** (Excellent Album)

“This splendid appendage to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s much-praised Debussy series is in man ways the most revelatory of all. In bringing together these three contemporaneous ballets, in the detailed versions for solo piano that Debussy wrote as short scores before orchestration, Bavouzet casts fresh light on a little-known area of this composer’s output…The recorded sound is excellent, as with all these volumes. Enthusiastically, if superfluously, recommended.” 

“…this is a marvellous disc and the climax in so many ways of Bavouzet’s complete Debussy cycle. “ 

“The fifth volume of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of the complete piano music of Claude Debussy is at least as fine as the previous four, and perhaps even more interesting. Throughout this series, Bavouzet has shown himself to be not only a stupendous virtuoso -- nothing in the Études or the Préludes is technically beyond him -- but also an exemplary Debussy pianist. He knows how to blend, balance, shade, and shadow so that the music always sounds like it is by Debussy and no other composer. In this volume, Bavouzet takes on three works rarely programmed or recorded in any form and plays them in their nearly unknown piano versions: the ballets Khamma, Jeux, and La boîte à joujoux. Though the piano versions were intended only as aids for dance rehearsal and not as a substitute for the full scores, they prove wholly persuasive in these performances. Bavouzet tosses off the most challenging passages as easily as if they were five-finger exercises, but more importantly, he makes compelling cases for these rare pieces, revealing each as a fully worthy work, something at which many conductors have failed. Though no fan of the composer should be without the orchestral versions of these scores, this disc should be of interest to anyone who loves Debussy. Chandos’ digital sound is warm, deep, detailed, and colorful.” 

Artistic Quality 10         Sound Quality 10 

“…This is an unusual and valuable capper to one of the two or three greatest Debussy piano cycles on disc – not to be missed.”

Editor's Choice

“These three works are piano versions of ballet music intended for full orchestra; Debussy never finished orchestrating Khamma and its completion was left to Charles Koechlin. But with performances on solo piano of such vivid colours, such superbly voiced textures and such flair nuance and richness of atmosphere, who needs orchestras anyway? It’s magnificent playing.”

 
 

Editors Choice

“A marvellous conclusion to Bavouzet’s absolutely essential Debussy series” “Altogether, a remarkable achievement, and the disc is every bit as essential – perhaps more so for the rarity of the repertoire – as previous instalments”

 

“Jean-Efflam Bavouzet concludes his stellar traversal of Debussy’s complete piano works with the composer’s rarely heard ‘short scores’ of his three late ballets.
Debussy devotees will already own the orchestral versions of these works, but I highly recommend Bavouzet’s accounts. He approaches the pieces on their own terms, seems to know the orchestral versions intimately and realizes every bar of the music imaginatively and effortlessly. Other versions might be competitive, but they are few and far between. What Bavouzet provides is a perfect conclusion to his complete five-disc Debussy, a remarkable achievement that I have followed from the beginning and now consider the best of all presently available. The recorded sound is exceptional and the booklet notes by Roger Nichols are, as always, concise and informed."

“... His [Bavouzet]accounts of all three pieces are graphic and meticulous.” 

“Bavouzet’s survey of Debussy’s piano music seemed to have come to a natural end with his outstanding disc of the two books of Images and the complete Studies, released by Chandos a year ago. But this collection of three scores that are far better known in their orchestral versions … is an unexpected bonus. In all three works, Bavouzet’s exceptional control, variation of touch and keyboard colour regularly provide new insights.”