Debussy: Jeux (Piano Version) - Ader

Claude Debussy
Jeux (Piano Version)
Préludes 1ère Livre
Alice Ader
OGAM 488005-2 - 2002


Paris, 29th May 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Pierre Monteux looks at his bassoonist and unfolds Modern Music to the world, creating the sensationalistic mayhem and rage we all know of at Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps première.

That day, sat a funny looking man in the beautiful, newly opened hall on Avenue Montaigne. His mind probably reflecting on when his own music, two weeks before, had already marked the beginning of the great modern musical art, albeit a less chaotic but just as unsuccessful soirée, with the great Nijinsky on stage.
This man, in my humble opinion one of the five greatest innovators of the entire history of music alongside Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Schoenberg, was Claude Debussy. The sublime masterpiece premiered just a few days before the Sacre, in the very same theatre, under the same conductor, was Jeux.

This amazingly intellectual composition almost makes the Sacre sound like a comfortable mainstream work. While Stravinsky’s masterpiece confronts the listener with powerful interwoven dynamics and startling rhythmical figures, Debussy’s heady and sensual score takes modernity to a totally new structural depth.

In order to really fathom the harmonic marvels, it helps to plunge into the amazing solo piano version, although personally I’m in love with the sublime orchestral colours of the full score. In this superb recording, Alice Ader analyses this fundamental music like no one else, conveying the playful and innocently mischievous ménage à trois of the subject’s ballet with elegance and beauty of tone.

This distinguished Parisian pianist, a champion of the great contemporary repertoire at IRCAM, also treats her listener with a delicate and subtle rendition of another of Debussy’s milestones, the 1st Book of the Préludes.


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