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Rating: Going to the exhibitions of impressionist painters has recently become very "trendy", but what matters is that it allows for a comfortable enjoyment of that Culture which those in power present to us as a bogeyman, something formidable, complicated, and in any case reserved for an elite of specialists. Instead, there are also common people who want to fill up on beauty and spend a few hours away from the tentacles of the Great Rude One reigning over us. It's a pity that very few of these same willing and admirable people will be found at a concert where the music of Debussy or Ravel is played. Yet if their eyes are capable of going into ecstasy in front of a Monet painting, it is unclear why their ears should not do the same with the clean and rarefied notes of Claude Debussy, which seem scattered according to whim, but are always at the right spot, just like the brushstrokes of an impressionist painting, seemingly chaotic but able to represent a world better than a perfect miniature. The fact is that at such a concert, it will be almost automatic to find oneself surrounded by people speaking other languages, those of civilized countries. We are left with making the best of a bad situation and at the same time trying to do a bit of advertising for Culture, by talking about a work like Debussy's Preludes for piano, the listening experience of which is somehow comparable to a gallery of paintings, even if the author himself warned against an overly pictorial interpretation, specifying that the "titles" he placed at the end (not by chance right at the end) of each prelude were meant to be just a suggestion.
It is better to say that it is a series of visions, meaning by this term something not too well defined, that depends a lot on the mood of the listener. For example, "Danseuses de Delphes" is so serene and harmonious that it evokes antiquity, but the dancers of Delphi are optional: those who want to see them are welcome to do so, but nothing prevents thinking of the columns of a Greek temple or an Egyptian obelisk. However, it will always be a bright vision, of clear perfection. So in "Voiles" it is not certain that the swaying motion of the notes wants to paint exactly "Sails," but the same ocean waves could be the protagonists of this other transparent and light vision. It's more difficult to imagine anything but the wind in the two preludes that represent it: both "Le vent dans la plaine" and "Ce qu'a vu le vent de l'Ouest" are genuine gusts of notes, obtained through a masterful use of resonances. In the first ("The wind on the plain") the force is not violent but constant and relentless; from the plain, which is crushed by it, a faint melody tries to rise, soon swept away, the second ("What the West wind saw") is a true whirlwind of notes, hardly to believe it could be produced by just a piano. "Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir" ("Sounds and scents linger in the evening air") besides being a line by Baudelaire is a suggestion that couldn't be vaguer: how many kinds of sounds and scents can be sensed (or imagined) at dusk? Here the interpretation becomes personal: in these delicate and suffused notes, serenely melancholic, I read one word above all, which is "nostalgia". "Des pas sur la neige" ("Footsteps in the snow") is at the limit of onomatopoeic: at first, it really seems that you can hear them, those muffled steps. Not always are the notes this rarefied; some preludes present themselves as true dances. "Minstrels" ("Minstrels") is a dance composed of jolts, a bit distorted and drunk, while "La danse de Puck" is the light and indefinite dance of the sprite from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The dance can be brutally cut short, as in "La serenade interrompue", where the piano perfectly simulates a Spanish guitar, or only hinted at, as in "Les collines d'Anacapri" where a sketch of a tarantella emerges every once in a while from the web of luminous notes painting the Mediterranean landscape. The sweetest prelude is without a doubt "La fille aux cheveux de lin" ("The girl with the flaxen hair"). Here the piano is literally caressed, as if every key were a strand of the girl's hair. The most evocative one, and at least as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful of the twelve, is "La Cathédrale engloutie" ("The submerged cathedral") based on an ancient legend. The most thrilling moment is in the central part: the notes become spine-chilling chimes that seem to truly come from remote depths, but the preparatory phase is also beautiful, with progressively stronger and darker notes seemingly leading us down into the abyss, until we finally glimpse the majestic cathedral and hear its powerful bells.
The preludes seen so far belong to Book One, which dates back to 1910. There is also a Book Two, almost as beautiful, which would deserve a separate review. There are countless splendid performances of the preludes, and also some peculiar interpretations, like that of the Chinese pianist Fou Ts'Ong, based on the affinity of Debussy's scales with those typical of oriental music. But if I had to indicate a performance not to be missed, I would say Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, not out of foolish patriotism, but because he was someone who in my area is called "pìssero," that is so attentive to detail as to verge on neurosis. Someone capable of stopping a concert and leaving in a black rage if there was too much noise or even if he just wasn't feeling up to it. But precisely because of this, capable of giving maximum importance to every single note, which is fundamental when dealing with compositions where each note stands out so clearly and distinctly as to present itself as a challenge to overcome, just like the brushstrokes of an impressionist painter: few but enough to define an image, and for this very reason, one must not get one wrong! With Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, this risk was practically nil, and the result simply divine. Enjoy your listening.
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