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Debussy: Starry Night – Preludes, Book I & Other Works

Michael Lewin

HK$158.99HK$273.99
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Original Recording Format: DXD
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Starry Night features the music of Debussy played by pianist Michael Lewin.  It is Available in Stereo DSD 256 and Stereo DSD 512 – exclusively at NativeDSD Music!

Pagodes (Pagodas) are Asian temples, often quite large, notable for their curved roofs and graceful structures. The Japanese colored woodblock prints were the most avidly collected of all prints, and Debussy enthusiastically embraced the French fascination regarding the Orient and Japan in particular, ‘Le japonisme.’ (It was at this time that the famous French pickup line appeared: “Would you like to come up and see my Japanese prints?”) Debussy incorporates the pentatonic scale as well as bells, gongs, and gamelans, all suffused with a luminous atmosphere, stylized delicacy, elegant dance movement, and rhythmic counterpoint.

II. La soirée dans Grenade (Evening in Granada) is one of Debussy’s three Spanish piano pieces. His uncanny insight into the Spanish soul is particularly remarkable considering that he never even visited his neighboring country. It employs his novel compositional technique of alternating and juxtaposing various musical ideas rather than developing them, thereby creating a very modern and almost cinematic sense of splicing, fragments presented without transition. Tied together with the Habañera dance rhythm made so famous in “Carmen,” the strumming guitars, castanets, flamenco melodies, smoldering passion, and into intoxicating languor magically create a sultry scented summer evening in Spain.

Michael Lewin, Pianist

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
Estampes, L. 100 - No. 1. Pagodes
05:55
2.
Estampes, L. 100 - No. 2. La soiree dans Grenade (Evening in Granada)
05:23
3.
Estampes, L. 100 - No. 3. Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain)
03:47
4.
2 Arabesques, L. 66
04:17
5.
Children's Corner, L. 113
03:05
6.
Les soirs illumines par l'ardeur du charbon
02:34
7.
Nuit d'etoiles (arr. K. Attwood for piano)
04:36
8.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 1. Danseuses de Delphes
03:17
9.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 2. Voiles
03:39
10.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 3. Le vent dans la plaine
02:12
11.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 4. Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir
03:31
12.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 5. Les collines d'Anacapri
03:06
13.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 6. Des pas sur la neige
03:51
14.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 7. Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest
03:28
15.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 8. La fille aux cheveux de lin
02:33
16.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 9. La serenade interrompue
02:30
17.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 10. La cathedrale engloutie
06:06
18.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 11. La danse de Puck
02:52
19.
Preludes, Book 1, L. 117 - No. 12. Minstrels
02:30

Total time: 01:09:12

Additional information

Label

SKU

DSL92190

Qualities

, , , , , ,

Channels

Artists

Composers

Genres

,

Digital Converters

Horus, Merging Technologies

Mastering Engineer

Daniel Shores, Tom Caulfield (DSD 256 & DSD 512)

Mastering Equipment

Mixed and mastered on Legacy Audio speakers

Instruments

Original Recording Format

Piano

Steinway Model D #590904

Piano Technician

John Veitch

Producer

Dan Merceruio

Recording Engineer

Daniel Shores

Recording location

Sono Luminus Recording Studio in Boyce, Virginia on July 7-8, 2014

Recording Software

Pyramix, Merging Technologies

Recording Type & Bit Rate

DXD

Speakers

Legacy Audio

Release DateJanuary 29, 2016

Press reviews

Classical Modern Music Review

The piano works of Claude Debussy are among the most beautifully lyrical music ever written. The same might be said of his contemporary Maurice Ravel. They gave modernism a long look at the increased possibilities of tonality in an era when the cutting edge of the music was about to turn elsewhere for a time. And because they and Satie created new music that was not fully followed up upon, we see them today as not only a lovely conclusion of an epoch but harbingers of the new radical tonality of the present.

Pianist Michael Lewin gives us on Starry Night: Preludes Book I & Other Works (Sono Luminus 92190) an especially brilliant reading of some of Debussy’s most lyrical works.

A special treat is “Nuit d’etoiles (Starry Night),” Debussy’s first published work, completed in 1880 when Claude was only 18. It was originally written as a song for soprano and piano. This is the first recording of Koji Attwood’s version for solo piano alone.

It is in good company with Debussy’s “Estampes,” the “Preludes, Book I,” and a few additional shorter works.

Michael Lewin is not out to impress you with technique. These works are not so much about that, though they do make technical demands at times. Foremost they call for a beautiful touch and a sure sense of phrasing which Lewin provides consistently and poetically. He is in no hurry to get through these works, but often lingers over them with a artistic relish, a clear love of the sensuous properties of the tone combinations and a mastery of the rubato potentialities of phrasing. It is music that can be extraordinarily pellucid. Lewin makes of those possibilities something quite moving and transformative for the listener.

These are some of the most moving performances of these works I have heard. The sonics are wonderful–as is mostly the case with Sono Luminus releases. If you are familiar with the standard Debussy readings, you will no doubt find the superior sonics and poetics of the Lewin versions here much to your liking. Don’t know Debussy’s piano works much? Start with this one.

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Sono Luminus 79 albums

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