I like them all, but Bergamasque, Childrens Corner and Preludes book 1 stand out for me. But I'm sure my opinion will change at least 20 times the next years.
Pour Le Piano is also an amazing piece. The Toccata is awesome. There was a great interpretation of the Toccata by Samson François on youtube, but someone deleted it!. . (Fortunately I dowloaded the video before that :devil
I dig most if not all of CB's piano works, which that comes on top is usually down to the form of the day, today, I'd pluck Suite Bergamasque if my fingers where willin'!
I like them all a lot, though I have a special fondness for the Estampes and the Preludes.
If the Etudes had been given less objective and more illustrative titles, they could probably over time have gained almost as much popularity among the listening public as the Preludes ...
Most of his piano music stands out as quite good to me, but Suite Bergamasque I think is his very best. I am not going on what I think is likely his most challenging or innovative work here, just what moves me the most musically. I find this work magical and in my mind it is one of the greatest suites for piano in the repertoire.
Images. Especially book 2. I also really like the Preludes and a few others. Some of his other works, like the Children's Corner and Suite Bergamasque, I find pretty but also somewhat boring at this point.
Debussy's piano music is wonderful. My top 3 would be Preludes Book 1, Suite Bergamasque and Deux Arabesques - I voted for the latter since I figured it deserved a vote.
I love all of Debussy's solo piano music, but the Preludes Book 2, Etudes Book 2 (the last one is proto-Messiaen!), and Images Book 1 stand out in particular as consistently inventive and excellent.
Preludes Book 2 and Deux Arabesques--in 2008, I was in Vienna in December, a particular concert that I attended at the Musikverein featured Schubert's B Flat Sonata and Debussy's 2nd Book of Preludes. The concert was absolutely thrilling and the associations--and the music itself, of course--remain every bit as compelling.
The Preludes (both books) because they're beautiful, evocative of images and emotions, some of the most effective pieces in the piano repertoire at using all the colors of the instrument, and also quite varied experiments with rhythm and tonality for their time.
Well, it looks like I'm the first one to vote for L'isle joyeuse, which really is an excellent piece. The other piano works from Debussy that I like are the Etudes (beautiful), and of course the Preludes. But this is coming from someone whose taste never really agreed with Debussy for some reason.
Thank you! I knew I wasn't the only one! Definitely my favorite Debussy piece. It's a gorgeous, forward-looking work with lots of whole-tone scale and chord progressions.
^ I take that back. Children's Corner is very charming, and I have fond memories of playing Jimbo's Lullaby and Golliwogg's Cake-walk when I was younger.
Debussy is one of my absolute favorite piano composers. His piano works are some of the rare ones that never, ever get old for me, and it's really difficult to pick a favorite. Gun to my head, I'd have to say Preludes I, but it is all SO GOOD.
I never cared for the early arabesques, or that reverie, may have liked Girl with the Flaxen Hair for one time when I first heard it in childhood, but don't care for that now either. Cathedrale Engloutie has been exposed to death.
BUT, the majority of this literature is so outstanding I cannot choose but a big bunch of it....
I am still mesmerized by the prelude, Book I, No. 6, Des pas sur la neige, because it is made of nearly nothing, has a maximum expressive strength while using the minimum of materials, and includes a very Satie-like non musical directive -- perhaps the only like it in all of Debussy -- "like an old (or remembered?) regret."
If anything is "music for other musicians," Des pas sur la neige has got to be one of those. I believe there is none other quite similar from Debussy.
The piece is masterly, and displays the most quiet kind of virtuosity in its writing.
I adore this piece too! I am preparing it for performance in the fall.
The rhythm of the "footsteps" makes me think of walking alone expecting someone else to be there, who isn't there any longer. There is the footstep you can hear, then an equal amount of time for the footstep that's absent, then one heard, then one absent. Debussy was genius not to cover up that experience with too many notes.
Suite Bergamasque is featured prominently on the Isao Tomita synthesizer Debussy album, and so I became fond of it as among the earliest Debussy works I became aware of. But it was Images 1 and 2 I heard on the radio that opened my ears to colorful possibilities of solo piano for the first time.
I actually really enjoy reverie. It's difficult to find an interpretation that suits your likings though, it was played one way and recorded by someone, and everyone just copied that version. It's way too fast in that one. I did like Kathryn Scott's interpretation, and Xavier de maistre played it wonderfully on the harp. I also really like la valse romantique. It's just a shame that Debussy's pieces go from the difficulty of le petit negre, to a much higher difficulty like la valse romantique. I love Debussy, but I am not able to play a lot of his pices, but I hope to do so in the future.
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