Output details

Danel, Marc. Debussy String Quartet, Piano Trio (with Daniel Blumenthal), Danses. Fuga libera FUG595 [2012].

The major research feature of this disc is the recording of Debussy’s early Piano Trio, composed in the summer of 1880 for Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezhda von Meck, who had engaged the 18-year-old Frenchman as a house pianist. The (partly incomplete) score was rediscovered in the 1980s, when pianist Daniel Blumenthal participated in the modern French and US premieres. The Trio was then recognized as an important document in understanding Debussy’s creative evolution. When the quartet prepared the trio for performance, they became aware that the recent critical edition (Henle Verlag) was unsatisfactory, and they entered into a collaboration with the musicologist Roy Howat who is preparing an edition of the work in Durand’s critical Debussy Edition. Upon further study, the quartet in turn developed together with Blumenthal a fuller and more convincing reconstruction of the 25 missing bars of the violin and piano parts in the finale, based on their own long-standing knowledge of and engagement with the late-Romantic French chamber repertoire. The imperative thus consists in making available a little-known work by an important composer in a version reflecting close study of the sources, a profound understanding of the style and the latest scholarly research. The disc also features the Danels’ account of the Debussy String Quartet, the fruit of more than 100 performances during their 22-year existence. The two works are complemented by the 1904 Danse sacrйe et danse profane, in both its rarely heard original version for chromatic harp (rarely heard, because the instrument fell out of use), string quartet and double bass, and in its more familiar transcription with piano instead of harp.