Complete Piano Works Vol.3

Description

The first two volumes of Alessandra Ammara's Debussy study, primarily devoted to the Préludes and Images, have been praised for their affinity with the composer's elusive and pictorial language. According to Fanfare, "Ammara reveals her sensitivity to the Debussyan sound world, teeming with blurred contours and imbued with varied light, in the manner of the painter J.M.W. Turner." In the third volume, she focuses mainly on the twelve Études, miraculously composed in the space of just two months, in August and September 1915. Weakened by illness following a diagnosis of rectal cancer in 1909, and faced with the pressing need to increase his income through publishing and performance, Debussy composed the Études during a stay in a town near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast. Emerging from a period of deep depression, he once again drew inspiration from the sea, in a sudden and final creative surge that gave birth to the suite for two pianos, En blanc et noir, and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp. However, it is the Douze Études that both defined Debussy's late style—for piano, echoing his ballet for Diaghilev, Jeux—and constituted a model and a challenge for later composers of piano études, from Tansman to Ligeti. Debussy himself claimed they were "a warning to pianists: do not venture into music if you do not have exceptional hands." While the arid titles of the Études conceal their rich and teeming complexity, certain aspects of their inventiveness are foreshadowed by the earlier works on Alessandra Ammara's album. The three movements of Estampes are as much "études" in their own way as the Études—particular types of movements, refracted through the images of a Japanese pagoda, a Spanish evening, and a garden in the rain. Dating from 1904 and capturing the passion of his affair with Emma Bardac, L'Isle Joyeuse refers both to the island of Jersey and to a painting by Watteau, but it also constitutes a study in the superimposition of scales.