Lugansky - Debussy, Images, Book II

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Images, Book II, L. 120 (1907)
Nikolai Lugansky, 2019, Mariinsky Theatre

[0:00] No. 1 - Cloches à travers les feuilles. Lent
[4:20] No. 2 - Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût. Lent
[9:29] No. 3 - Poissons d'or. Animé

“Cloches à travers les feuilles (Bells Through the Leaves) Debussy first heard Javanese musicians at the Paris Universal Exposition and the sounds of the gamelan they played stayed with him, surfacing in the allusions to the instrument in the present piece. Writing about Java in 1913, he said, “There was once, and there still is, despite the evils of civilization, a race of delightful people who learnt music as easily as we learn to breathe. Their academy is the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, thousands of tiny sounds which they listen to attentively without ever consulting arbitrary treatises.” The bells of the title are initiated in the first two measures by way of a whole tone scale, from which the entire piece is constructed. The simplicity of this opening belies a predominant complexity of intertwining parts that requires the music be written on three staves. A middle episode of pianistic brilliance contrasts strongly with the exotic, otherworldly sonorities of the first and last sections.

Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (And the Moon Sets over the Temple That Was) Debussy dedicated this piece to his good friend and biographer Louis Laloy, an authority on oriental and ancient Greek music. The poetic wording of the title, the fragmentary melodic structure, the pungent dissonances, and the almost floating nature of the sonorities all confirm what Debussy referred to as the search by the poets and painters of the Symbolist movement for “the inexpressible, which is the ideal of all art.”

Poissons d’or [Golden fish] This piece, along with Reflections on the Water, is probably the most frequently performed of the Images sets. And no wonder, since it is both brilliant and evocative. Obviously, Poissons d’or are inextricably associated with water, but here, unlike Reflections, the imagery is concrete. It is said that a painting of two gold-colored fish on a small Japanese lacquer panel that Debussy owned was the inspiration for this work. In order to suggest the darting movements of these tiny water creatures, a pianist must be at once the master of grace and elegance as well as of freedom of expression. Debussy’s images, whatever the subject, have a fantasy that is as closely related to mental images as to the physical reality of pianistic bravura.”

Orrin Howard