Volume II of the complete Debussy Piano Music finds Pascal Roge in fine fettle, his playing voluptuous and the keyboard sound richly sonorous. Recorded in Switzerland, 28-30 December 2005, these works enjoy high gloss and pearly resonance, especially as the 1903 Estampes might well represent the first, deliberately impressionistic work for the piano. My own daughter, in passing by my audiophile’s space during Pagodes, noted how “watery” the piano sounded. Brilliant effects in the Jardins sous la pluie, mixing ostinati with folk song. The Evening in Granada proves muscular and intimate, more than an exercise in C Sharp octaves borrowed from Ravel.
A conscious desire to contribute a piano method, along with supplying an active musical dossier of his daughter Chou-Chou’s (Claude-Emma) keyboard progress led to the birth of Children’s Corner in 1908. Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood are quite close. Roge takes a soft, plastic line for these pieces, and even the staccato, pompous Golliwog’s Cakewalk hardly rails at Wagner. The E Major Arabesque is a thing of beauty; ever since I heard its orchestral guise in the film Portrait of Jennie and Oscar Levant’s early CBS inscription, I have found it beguiling. Roge plays it lovingly, then swings with panache into the second of the 1888 studies in salon invention. The Suite Bergamasque continues to weave a simultaneously archaic and erotic spell, and it would hard to name a poor recorded performance. Roge plays the four movements for their brittle, sentimental irony, the reverence and distance Debussy had for the rococo. A stately Prelude, a delicately poised Minuet, the suave stasis of Clair de Lune, and the toccata-like Passepied pass in shimmering review for our delectation.
The little diptych 1888-1890 pieces, the Ballade and Mazurka, first encountered by me with Walter Gieseking, return to the salon. They remind us that Debussy had Mme. Von Meck for a patroness, and that Tchaikovsky, Grieg. Chopin, and the French music hall contributed their parts to the dazzling amalgam we call the Debussy style. Le Petit Negre and Le plus que lente (1909) point to the sophisticated boulevardier in Debussy that would appeal directly to that man-about-town in French music, Poulenc.
— Gary Lemco
