Debussy’s Creations, With Just the Right Touch

The notion that great music makes its great impression under virtually any professional interpretive circumstances must have been propounded before the arrival of Debussy’s piano works.

If ever music of immense stature stood or fell on the basis of a performer’s interpretive intercession, it is Debussy’s: at once powerful in all its aspects and fragile enough to be shattered by misconception. Not even Chopin’s similarly non-heroic creations depend for their effect so much on the performer’s intelligence and sensitivity.

The Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman has always shown a bent for the poetic--the subtly lyric as opposed to the overtly dramatic, as evidenced in his highly persuasive playing of Chopin.

In his stunningly fine new recording of the two books of Debussy Preludes (Deutsche Grammophon 435 733, two CDs) he is at once the most analytical of pianists and the most imaginative.

What strikes the listener from the outset is the reflectiveness that Zimerman has invested in these performances. Yet they never seem studied. The two books emerge of a piece, but there is no single, overriding approach to their 24 separate components, which puts Zimerman at odds with the locus classicus for this music, Walter Gieseking, whose mystical 1950s performances of the Preludes are available on a single CD (EMI 61004).

In Zimerman’s hands, the floating pieces--e.g., “Danseuses de Delphes,” “Des pas sur la neige,” “Les fees sont d’exquises danseuses”--are as magically evocative as one could desire. But they also have rhythmic backbone, as befits a pianist who also has strong modernist sentiments.

When the music is more outgoing, as in the “wind” pieces--”Le vent dans la plaine” and “Ce qu’a vu le vent de l’Ouest”--the playing has the percussive edge one expects of a Bartok specialist.

Zimerman, then, is many pianists--all probing and accomplished--in this masterly set of performances. The only fault is economical: 84 minutes of playing time are spread across two full-priced CDs.

Unlike Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini sounds the modernist in everything he does: clear-eyed, analytical, rhythm-oriented. So, it’s hardly surprising that he would gravitate to the most hard-edged of Debussy’s piano works, his dozen “Etudes,” or that he delivers them with characteristic clarity and control (Deutsche Grammophon 423 678).

But there is fantasy and humor in this music, too, which Pollini’s tense playing, even in such whimsies as “Pour les tierces” and “Pour les agrements,” fails to disclose.

Interesting how little difference there is between Pollini’s approach to Debussy and to the fillup, Alban Berg’s thorny Sonata. But perhaps he’s making a point about stylistic similarities.

A tantalizing whiff of what’s missing from Pollini’s “Etudes” is offered by the young English pianist Joanna MacGregor in the half-dozen she offers as part of an altogether brilliant and satisfying recital that also includes Bartok’s Bulgarian Dances and “Out of Doors” plus a Ravel group (Collins 14042).

Throughout this program, and especially in the Debussy, MacGregor exhibits a degree of fantasy, of dynamic and rhythmic daring that project the composer’s modernism more potently than Pollini’s single-mindedly tough approach.

MacGregor would seem to be an artist, not merely a pianist, to contend with.

A nearly complete set of Debussy’s music for one and two pianos, with only some juvenilia missing, comes in a pair of Philips’ budget-priced “Duo” sets (438 718, 438 721, two CDs each).

The pianist is Werner Haas (1931-76), whose splendid Ravel interpretations are likewise available in the Duo series.

Haas attended Gieseking’s master classes, but if there was any influence, it isn’t evidenced in the younger artist’s Debussy, recorded in the early ‘60s.

The Haas sets are valuable and, obviously, a good buy. But the playing is on the plain side, perhaps too intent on distancing itself from the then-pervasive, mannered Gieseking style.