For Claude Debussy, the imaginative life was real life. A musical pantheist and revolutionary, he sensed the very heart of the centre of natural phenomena, their 'inscape' or essence; and seeking, as he put it, to 'express the inexpressible', he longed to liberate music 'from the barren traditions that stifle it'. Such fantasy and freedom combine with a no less marked love of precision and finesse to give Debussy's music an inimitable calibre and stature.

Few overviews of Debussy's piano music have been as consistently satisfying as Gordon Fergus-Thompson's. Sensitively recorded, it is full of half-lights, colour and vibrancy. It won the MRA `Best Instrumental Recording of the Year` and a Penguin Guide `rosette` and has received rave reviews in the international press.

 

TRACK LIST
CD 1

1. Rêverie
2. Suite bergamasque
3. Images oubliées
4. Pour le piano – Suite
5. Images – Set I
6. Images – Set II

CD 2

1. Deux Arabesques
2. Danse bohémienne
3. Ballade slave (1890)
4. Danse (Tarantelle styrienne)
5. Valse romantique
6. Mazurka
7. Nocturne
8. Préludes – Book I

CD 3

1. L’isle joyeuse
2. Estampes
3. D’un cahier d’esquisses
4. Morceau de concours
5. Masques
6. Préludes – Book II

CD 4

1. Children’s Corner
2. Hommage à Joseph Haydn
3. Le petit Nègre
4. La plus que lente
5. Berceuse héroïque
6. Elégie
7. Page d’album (Pièce pour le vêtement du blesse) (1915)

Gordon Fergus-Thompson, piano