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CD to win: Vienna 1900 – Pahud, Meyer, Kashimoto, Plesser, Le Sage
The Harshness of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, the Visionary Tale of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet: Negar Haeri, Denis Herlin and Alain Lompech Choose the Reference Version of the Preludes (Free I) by Claude Debussy.
Jérémie Rousseau’s report
The sound recording is credited with the scathing high notes of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s old piano, whose direct tone removes fluidity, mystery and wonder from Dancers of Delphi very percussive.
Does Fazil Say trust Debussy? His liberties with the text are worth Dancers of Delphi very unorthodox and ultimately quite confusing.
Refined touch, round sound, sense of harmonic listening: Steven Osborne’s Debussy suffers just from its limited nuance and a slight statism. If the fingers impress in What the West Wind Saw virtuosity does not deliver the terror specific to this storm of the senses.
It all starts with Dancers of Delphi surrounded by sensuality, where time stretches, rendered with a manic respect for nuances. Then Kristian Zimerman delivers a fantastic, hallucinatory and radical tale of What the West Wind Saw : what madness! Mystical, The Sunken Cathedral will nevertheless suffer from the constant defect of this recording: its hard and metallic sound recording, for music which demands the exact opposite.
We enter with real pleasure into the soft, voluptuous Debussy of François Chaplin, whose homogeneous texture draws a body in movement, ideal for Dancers of Delphi . Natural and beautiful in appearance, What the West Wind Saw unfolds into a calmer and more civilized vision, like a Sunken Cathedral clear.
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet immediately confers on the Dancers of Delphi their internal vibration: nobility and clarity of exposition are the first virtues of this Debussy. What the West Wind Saw grabs us and moves towards the inevitable, while The Sunken Cathedral mixes analytical vision and abandonment to the moment: everything is there, from the way of emerging from the fog to the sound saturation. Without forgetting a capture that lets the piano breathe, in its murmurs as well as its roars.
Awards
N°1 : Version F Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (Chandos, 2006)
N°2 : Version E François Chaplin (Arion, 2000)
N°3 : Version D Krystian Zimerman (DG, 1991)
N°4 : Version A Steven Osborne (Hyperion, 2006)
N°5 : Version B Fazil Say (Warner, 2016)
N°6 : Version C Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (DG, 1978)
Coming soon to the Record Critics Tribune:
15/9/2024 : Verdi, Macbeth
22/9/2024 : Sibelius, Violin Concerto
29/09/2024 : Brahms, Quintet with clarinet
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