for the piano #3: Debussy vs. Ravel vs. Satie

My vote goes to the author of the original oblique strategies: Erik Satie's Performance Indications

^^^ My point exactly! Like Eno, Satie is an awesome spirit guide, but, also like Eno, the music kind of wore off for me.

wait I thought JL and MP were the same person? o_O

ravel

We have almost the same given name. This has caused confusion before!

MP = west coast, an actual musician with accomplishments
JL = east coast, an insignificant musician with modest cartooning accomplishments

I think we are probz about the same age too.

Doppelgänger!

I think nakh is my overseas counterpart, though I wonder if he would agree :)

hmmn not sure

you seem pretty immersed in 20th c classical and ~idm~

they are favourites of mine too, tho in general my listening habits are more scattershot and noisy / rockish (see the geir hongo listening club)

if you have the concentration to really explore a certain area, i think that whole chromatic period between wagner and schoenberg, including d, r & s but also scriabin, szymanowski, zemlinsky et al would be a worthwhile subject....i think maybe you are doing that already?

I am! I tried posting a little thing about it on the general CM thread about three times before I gave up (was using my rm's comp which crashes when you use this wireless receiver thing). A recent find in this vein is Franz Schreker's Chamber Symphony — luxuriously orchestrated and a feeling for harmony that is subtly unique. I'd recommend it.

I also have a bunch of Zemlinsky downloaded, need to delve into those.

nakhchivan have you heard the new Michael Hersch? fucking spectacular imo

i love these threads

I like them all. Satie for "Trois Gymnopedies," one of my favourite pieces of music ever, but I also love Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte" and some little Debussy piece I have on a promotional CD given out years ago by W.H. Smith when we still had them in Canada. Maybe someone can answer a question I posed a few days ago (I'm an amateur when it comes to this stuff): is "Trois Gymnopedies" classified as classical or 20th-century? It was written in 1888, and I don't how literal the term "20-century" is supposed to be.

Like Eno, Satie is an awesome spirit guide, but, also like Eno, the music kind of wore off for me.

I thought they'd both faded more me as well but every once in a while I rediscover Thursday Afternoon and it's like the first time all over again.

Satie was my entrance point to earlier classical as well, as he is for many people because he's just so modern (he often gets classified as 20th century despite most of his hits technically being 19th, but he's no romantic). It took an extra decade for me to wake up to Ravel and perhaps I'm still waking up to Debussy, but I've definitely responded more to the Preludes & the Etudes more than almost all the orchestral works.

There's that great exchange, I forget whether it's reprinted in 'Silence' or 'A Year From Monday', where Cage the young new-music critic and another critic were tussling over Satie in the 40's, Cage arguing in favor of Satie as the most forward-thinking & important, the other critic saying 'well he's been dead for 20+ years and he still isn't being prgorammed any more often in concerts, so just face it, the audience is never showing up for this guy', and Cage just making a quiet response that his time will come. And the concert hall was in fact never the appropriate venue for furniture music, but the second those Ciccolini LPs showed up and it finally had a chance to be heard in the right context, Satie found his audience. All this just underlines how the audiences for him and these other two composers don't quite completely intersect.

ps thanks for calling me 'actual' JL! helps to read that every once in a while in my cubicle here

Is #4 going to be Jerry Lee Lewis vs. Fats Domino vs. Little Richard? I want to get a head start on some relistening.

nah, Bartók vs. Schoenberg vs. Scriabin 8)

Well, Schoenberg doesn't have a huge volume of solo pcs though, despite their significance.

I'd say Bartok v Scriabin v Prokofiev myself. Prok's large solo piano ouevre is very very underrated outside of a couple of sonatas...

Schoenberg doesn't have much piano music, you're right (the Op. 25 suite has been in my head lately, so I'm biased) — Prokofiev does makes more sense, but I've only heard his symphonies so far.

Try Frederic Chiu in Prok's sonatas, he brings out the kinship with Debussy and Schumann more than yr demon-banger type pianists. Harmonia Mundi has collected them into a big cheap box. Also Prok's 3rd and 6th syms are AMAZING...

nakhchivan have you heard the new Michael Hersch? fucking spectacular imo

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 3 March 2011 19:55 (2 hours ago)

no, nor had i heard of him, which recording do you refer to?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Michael_Hersch_-_Orchestral_Works_-_Marin_Alsop_-_Album_Cover.jpg

he gets the same 'no adumbration needed' packaging as charles ives! pretty august for a 39 year old

This one. It is extremely modern, like the sort of stuff you'd keep away from people whose take on modern classical is gonna be "lotta racket." It's not busy-noisy, but it is challenging/abstract/"out." And, for me, breathtaking. Mandatory disclosure, I've worked with Cuckson and consider her one of the most exciting players working, she has incredible taste and vision. But that aside this is a truly breathtaking piece of music in my opinion

a couple of weeks ago I couldn't sleep and I listened to The Wreckage of Flowers on headphones in the dark, close hard listening w/o any internet/visual distractions, and it was really like traveling into the depths of space - or seeing glaciers form - or something like that: this feeling of a thing that didn't exist before being built with sound. but with simple sound: brief two- and three-note phrases, one instrument alone most of the time playing on one or two strings, and rests in between the phrases. not "minimalist," but taking cues from minimalism; emotional but not romantic; an incredible piece of music

I would pick Debussy here, though to be honest, I love almost everything Ravel wrote for piano. As technical piano music, he's almost unsurpassed, and the compositions are generally ridiculously beautiful to boot. But Debussy's music just opened up a whole pandora's box, while Ravel was refining what poured out. Also, Debussy is at his least precious and "impressionist" in his piano music (the etudes in particular), and also his funniest (his homage to Haydn totally doesn't sound like Haydn to me, and in fact sounds like someone playing a modern jazz ballad in 1910). I have almost exactly the same opinion re: the Debussy and Ravel string quartets.

Satie I like, but his music has yet to really grab me by the heart. I find him pleasant, and also clever, but not really the gripping for some reason.

and also, see Ligeti's piano music for modern takes on these three composers' piano styles

and it was really like traveling into the depths of space - or seeing glaciers form - or something like that: this feeling of a thing that didn't exist before being built with sound.

I think of this as 'the Sibelius thing' and I seek it out wherever it is reported. What label, aero? (ie can i get it off eMusic)

Whoah I just looked him up on the Fanfare review database and his 140 minute piano cycle The Vanishing Pavilions sounds amazing!

The generating seed for The Vanishing Pavilions was the poetry of Christopher Middleton (b. 1926), and the booklet notes suggest that Hersch’s piece be considered “a shattered song cycle without words.” There are some 50 movements, approximately half of which are responses to poetic images by Middleton.

Moments of stasis are gratefully received. A case in point is the stark “Intermezzo (D)” of the first Book, a dark modernist chorale. Other movements take this sort of stasis and contrast it with violent outbursts, while one of the longest movements of Book 1, the 14th, is a telling funeral march that transforms into exploratory canons, bookended by a repeated intermezzo.

This is disquieting music, to be sure. It holds its spell not because it offers windows of hope but because it forces us to examine ourselves as we are now. The deathly images of the chosen poetry act as visceral reminders of our own mortality. The repetition of movements, either verbatim, altered, or entirely re-examined, is a feature of Hersch’s structural play, framing large statements or simply altering our viewpoints. It all leads to the climactic 48th movement, a vast Mahlerian procession. The final two movements act as a sort of leave-taking, the simple mechanics of the final statement—36 chords slowly heading towards the extreme upper end of the keyboard’s range—being all the more effective for that simplicity, that openness.

It's on Vanguard, and it is on eMusic, but as is often the case with eMusic classical stuff, it's labeled/sorted wrong - it's under Miranda Cuckson's name (which is actually somewhat fair, as she is a tirelessly champion of new music and deserves name recognition). It's here:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Miranda-Cuckson-Hersch-the-wreckage-of-flowers-MP3-Download/12330504.html

Cool-- I have cred on there right now so I will listen and possibly DL tonite!

(PS yeah their "artist" field is fkin useless for classical-- I usually search using the "composer" option)

I grabbed it in mid-January, have listened several times & am listening again now - to me the effect of this music is so vivid, it's like discovering a new planetary system. but I can totally see how if somebody hadn't had any time for Berg/Webern/Weber, this would be tough - though to me - this is profoundly lyrical, just in a less metrical (is that a musical term? I mean in the poetic sense) way than lyricism often implies

the piano passage toward the end of part XIV of the wreckage of flowers is to me so heavily weighted with feeling...eager to hear how you like this

Psyched to hear it!

i probably need to listen to more debussy but my heart here is w/ ravel gaspard de la nuit is just so tremendous

Dominique so OTM

Lamp for Debussy try Book II of the Preludes, and the Etudes. Catnip for the Gaspard lover.

(there used to be a whole side of a building in downtown minneapolis (the Schmitt Music bldg) with a few bars of Gaspard painted onto it)

Satie I like, but his music has yet to really grab me by the heart. I find him pleasant, and also clever, but not really the gripping for some reason.

This is fair but it's also walking in with the wrong expectations -- Satie is not trying to grab you by the heart. The music is still lovely but he's deprogramming for centuries of classical music sentimentality. All the traditional modes of self-expression are undercut, but in ways so graceful that they're freeing, unless you hold them in such high reverence that you can only take the experience as an insult instead of a needed liberation. He's nearly in a different tradition than anyone else on any of these polls, as an influence and a friend of Debussy & Ravel he belongs on this one but he's still kind of a spoiler

On the other thread Aerosmith was getting ready to decry a Satie win and there might be a lot of silent voters on this thread but hopefully he will be mollified by the relative absence of pro-Satie arguments on the thread

I have to admit I only heard Debussy's Etudes last month for the first time, and they were not what I was expecting, at all. So I'll just keep listening.

Whose etudes recording, Milton? One thing that makes me so sad about Debussy's relatively early death is that he was obviously undergoing a very very interesting musical transformation-- what would have followed the Etudes and the chamber sonatas?

Also your first para re: Satie is so OTM. Deprogramming is exactly the word!

Satie is one of the only classical composers to whom I feel any heart connection.

Possibly I am completely missing the point, since for me at least some of his work is very emotionally expressive and evocative.

I have the Uchida. And that was a surprise too, I had her typed as a delicate player, but not on this

I love the Preludes -- it's just they're more in line with what I knew from his orchestral works, so it was hard for me to hear Debussy strictly in light of the piano. The Etudes are definitely more of a specific statement for the instrument. And I have to say, they are a lot more Satie than his earlier works!

& this is my favorite Tombeau / Gaspard: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/antonbatagov

xpost you may feel a heart connection with Satie, but it's not because he reached out and gripped it, it's because you already live in the same attic apartment with one disused piano stacked on top of the other one

Also, yeah, I think there will be a silent majority win for Satie, but maybe most people like me won't actually bother to vote.

actually that was why I had assumed Satie would walk this poll - I think his music appeals to a broad number of people who are reading it "wrong," which of course is an absurd notion - there is no "wrong" - but I feel like many people, on hearing Satie, regard him as expressive in the romantic style but in much simpler lines. Which is broadly appealing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted Ravel, though it was a tough choice between him and Debussy. Thanksto this thread I am now also an A. Tharaud fan. His Chopin waltzes are my current preferred versions.

Tharaud has a new disc of Scarlatti, which combo sounds absolutely perfect; can't wait to hear.

holy heads up, thank Jon L! in high school I had some kind of import LP of Scarlatti whose name is lost to me but which lives on in visual memory (beautiful shiny red LP sleeve with an image of a marble statue) and which I rememer as sparkling, rich stuff, looking forward to hearing the Tharaud

Scarlatti was such a genius, hundreds of these little gems all glittery with the light of sheer invention. A great foil to Bach and sometimes I actually like him better. His working circumstances are very very interesting too.

Even though his sonatas are VERY idiomatic to the harpsichord the way he ports to the modern piano is magical with a pianist of the right imagination and humor and bite. Horowitz made a couple dazzling LPs worth of Scarlatti, Pletnev did an amazing 2CD set, more recently there's a great Scarlatti disc by this hotshot young Russian guy on the BIS label goddamit I cannot remember his name... anyway I think the Tharaud will be aces high!

hotshot young Russian guy on the BIS label goddamit I cannot remember his name...

Yevgeny Sudbin?

Him!

Another great Scarlatti-on-piano disc is Pogorelich's, which I adore alongside the others just mentioned. And I'd put Pierre Hantai (three discs, plus an earlier one with overlapping selections) at the top of the harpsichord heap. And of course there's W. Carlos, who was at her most inspired with this composer!

Aero, I have had Hersch's long violin + piano work on my eMusic Saved list since your earlier posts. Mebbe this is the month I grab it. The samples are very, very interesting.

There are few things as transcendent as Ashkenazy's recording of "Ondine" from Gaspard de la nuit.

No Faure option? I probably would have voted Satie.

Faurés nocturnes for piano are so lovely.

Faure vs. Koechlin vs. De Severac

De Severwho?

If this is some fin de siècle composer I didn't know about, tell me more!

Every time this thread's revived, another stab in the heart

no way! Debussy is one of those composers who has the aura of establishment, but in actuality, I run into not enough people who rep for him. underrated in my book

Totally, especially the last three sonatas. They're a whole other world.

this thread makes me want to listen to every single thing mentioned in it

Corey, Deodat de Severac was roughly a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel and is definitely within that musical orbit. Add a more french-rustic feel as well as more frequent visits to musical Spain. There is a cheap 3CD set of Aldo Ciccolini performing the whole oeuvre.

For another lesser known figure from that world of piano magic, seek out Decaux, whose sole piano work is on a fantastic Fredric Chiu recital disc on Harmonia Mundi which also includes my favorite rec of Ravel's Miroirs and a beautiful rendition of Schoenberg's op. 11.

Thank you! I know Decaux's "Clair de Lune" — odd, lilting little Scriabinesque reverie. Apparently he destroyed everything else he wrote?

aero ~ i hadn't heard hersh previously, i looked at what's on youtube and it's interesting, quite compressed and lapidary though the full 'vanishing pavillions' is seemingly two hrs long....i will probably investigate more fully in time

dominique otm

Yeah, I forgot to OTM that when dominique posted it but I clamorously agree.

happy birthday Debussy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQwYz3-tN5A

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

i'm legit having an intense emotional reaction to this song

The greatest living Debussy and Chopin pianist, Ivan Moravec, has died at 84. His recordings are delicate miracles of light and shade. The Vox 2CD with Debussy's Images and Estampes on the first disc and various Chopin on the second is an ideal introduction to his playing.

He had a relatively small discography. Schubert D960 was in his live repertoire but there was never a recording. Maybe a live capture will come out. There was also an astonishing LP of Janacek on Nonesuch which has never been on CD.

moravec playing chopin's preludes & nocturnes <3

i wish to god i had ever seen him perform

only bumped this because it is the only thread w ravel in title but can someone give me a riyl Ravel String Quartet ?

I am so non-expert it doesn't matter, but I love the Melos Quartet recording fwiw*

*not much

Take your pick among the Arcanto, Belcea and Ébène quartets. All are top-notch modern recordings.

Not a big fan of the Melos, btw (sorry calzino).

xp

np, loads of stuff I like is always shit with classical headz.

looking for RIYL not recordings (but i will check out recordings mentioned--the one i have is Alan Berg)

Oh, 'recommend if you like' (had to look it up).

The Debussy quartet is its obvious touchstone. It's featured alongside Ravel's on all three of the records I suggested. The first two also come with Dutilleux's quartet, the third with Fauré's. Give those a listen if you haven't already.

Otherwise, there's always Szymanowski and Enescu, even Britten. Try Lucien Durosoir as well.

I read flopson's request as for recommendations of other works than the Ravel SQ?

The simplest answer must be the Debussy SQ, with which it is often paired? Otherwise, I dunno, possibly some of the Fauré chamber music (a piano trio*, two piano quartets**, two piano quintets*** and a string quartet****)?

*) ie piano, violin, cello
**) ie piano trio plus viola
***) ie piano quartet plus violin
****) ie piano quintet minus piano

Never even heard of Durosoir; intriguing; thanks, pomenitul!

merci https://media.giphy.com/media/VZbuV1vWMzEuQ/giphy.gif

Man, the results of this one still make me so angry.
― ephendophile (Eric H.), Monday, June 27, 2011 12:10 PM (six years ago)

Every time this thread's revived, another stab in the heart.
― third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Monday, August 1, 2011 7:50 AM (six years ago)