Debussy's Jeux
(https://cvj1llwqcyay0evy-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/vg-jeux-pastel-fountain-1913_1000.jpg) (https://www.pianorarescores.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Claude-Debussy.jpg) (https://cvj1llwqcyay0evy-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/vg-jeux-menage-a-trois-grouping-1913_1000.jpg)
It is doubtful that any theatre has experienced a more remarkable few weeks than the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris in May 1913. It was the scene on 29 May of the most notorious premiere of them all: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, the hoopla surrounding which overshadowed two rather different works.
The first Parisian performance of Fauré's sublime only opera, Pénélope, was given on 10 May, two days before the composer's 68th birthday. Five days later, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes unveiled a work with what turned out to be the last completed orchestral music by Debussy: Jeux. This 'poème dansé' has come to be seen as equally important as the Rite in its own way, but being eclipsed by the reception of Stravinsky's tour de force was just one factor among many working against Jeux getting a good start.
It took the best part of 40 years for the significance of Jeux to be recognised. While Stravinsky's advances grab you by the throat, and Schoenberg's expressionist works scream their angst, Jeux is understated and suffused with light. It's chromatic, yet never harsh; rhythmically complex, yet fleet-footed and graceful. Analysing it is like trying to capture wisps of mist.
What Debussy called the 'beautiful nightmare' of Stravinsky's Rite would never have been possible without the harmonic freedom of the Frenchman's earlier works. But in realising Debussy's orchestral ideal, Jeux had lessons for the radical post-war generation of composers in its fluidity of form. Rather than using form for unity and integration, Debussy's score explores discontinuity, with more than 60 changes of tempo, motifs in constant flux and ever-changing orchestral colours – and yet there is an almost invisible coherence.
Like Pinocchio, Jeux quietly unlocked the door to the way that later composers put their music together like a collage. This can be heard in Messiaen's mature works, while Stockhausen praised Jeux as the crucial step towards the 'moment form' that underpinned many of his pieces, a sentiment echoed by Ligeti. As Boulez put it, 'the general organisation of [Jeux] is as changeable instant by instant as it is homogeneous in development'.
The title mirrors the ambiguities of the scenario, in which a boy and two girls are searching for a tennis ball, but embark on other games, firstly childish, then more amorous. Boulez has described Jeux as 'The Afternoon of a faun in sports clothes', reflecting the musical affinity Jeux has with Debussy's early masterpiece and the ballet's echoes of the nymphs chasing the faun in Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography for Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, produced in May 1912. One month later, Debussy was persuaded to write a new work for the Ballets Russes. He was initially reluctant, a telegram to Diaghilev stating bluntly 'Subject ballet Jeux idiotic, not interested', but a doubling of the fee (and the shelving of Nijinsky's idea for a plane crash near the end) evidently prompted a change of heart.
Once committed, Debussy wrote the initial draft of Jeux at uncommon speed, in about a month from July to August 1912, telling André Caplet that he needed 'to find an orchestra "without feet" for this music'. Debussy refused to let Diaghilev and Nijinsky hear his work in progress, 'not wishing these barbarians to poke their noses into my experiments in personal chemistry!' He later came to view his caution as well-founded, telling Gabriel Pierné that Nijinsky 'with his cruel and barbarous choreography... trampled my poor rhythms underfoot like weed'.
In Nijinsky's defense, it is worth remembering that he did not hear the orchestral score until late in the day. While the piano duet version of the Rite gives a good flavour of this most percussive of ballets, Jeux on piano is far removed from Debussy's diaphanous orchestral textures. Matters were not helped by the frantic preparations for the Rite swallowing up rehearsal time. To compound it all, one of the three dancers for Jeux, Nijinsky's sister Bronislava, discovered she was pregnant just before the premiere.
The premiere of Jeux provoked no riot, no scandal of the sort that accompanied Nijinsky's choreography for Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, and certainly not bouquets and plaudits. Rather, there was bemusement about the dancing, while the music seemed barely to be noticed at all. Now, such indifference has been replaced by recognition of a work that epitomises the word sublime. Listening to Jeux, as the hesitant opening bars are interrupted by those indescribable chords opening a door to another universe, how did those sitting in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées nearly a century ago fail to realise that Debussy's games were very special indeed?
[Article taken from Classical-Music.com]
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Jeux, Debussy's only work composed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, was not the first orchestral piece of his to appear on the celebrated company's programmes. In 1912 Nijinsky had choreographed Debussy's Prélude à L'après-midi d'un faune (1892-4), giving it a scandalous concluding scene in which the frustrated faun masturbates with a nymph's discarded scarf. The composer was reportedly not amused by this explicit visualization of his Mallarmé-inspired work.
Debussy described Jeux as a 'poème dansé', though its poetry resides in the music rather than the text. Like Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, it is proof that the most marvellous ballet music can be composed to the most flimsy scenario. The 'games' of the title are a desultory tennis match and playful flirtation à trois. The scenario opens: 'The scene is a garden at dusk; a tennis ball has been lost; a boy and two girls are searching for it. The artificial light of the large electric lamps shedding fantastic rays about them suggests the idea of childish games: they play hide and seek, they try to catch one another, they quarrel, they sulk without cause. The night is warm, the sky is bathed in pale light; they embrace.'
Jeux premiered on 15 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, two weeks before the cataclysm that was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which completely overshadowed Debussy's ballet. It was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, who also danced the male character, joined by two of the company's leading female dancers, Tamara Karsavina and Ludmilla Schollar.
The tennis theme puzzled contemporary critics, most notably Debussy's friend Erik Satie, to whom a review in Revue musicale S.I.M. (15 June 1913) is attributed: 'Summer sports: Several readers have asked for the rules of Russian tennis, a game which will surely be all the rage this season in chateaux. The rules can be summarised thus: the game is played at night, under baskets of flowers lit by electric arc lights; three players are involved; there is no net; the ball is replaced by a football; the use of a racquet is forbidden. In a trench dug at the edge of the playing surface, an orchestra, which accompanies the players, is hidden.'
The theme of three extends to the music, much of which is a waltz subjected to time stretching and compressing. Musical ideas are alluded to, though never repeated precisely; these nocturnal goings-on are, like the wanderings of Mallarmé and Debussy's faun, seemingly without purpose, on the slippery border between dream and reality. The fleeting nature of the material is matched by Debussy's orchestral imagination: colours are constantly shifting in a play of timbres which offers an additional meaning to the title. Debussy's desire to create an orchestra 'without feet' was never more successfully realised; just as dancers seek to transcend the bounds of gravity, Debussy wanted to craft a floating orchestra.
As if to bring us back down to earth, the orchestral score notes precisely when and where a new tennis ball lands on the playing surface (thrown by 'an unknown hand', according to the scenario). The first initiates the disappearance of the surprised players into 'the nocturnal depths of the garden' and the second heralds the return of the opening music, though it is orchestrated differently. Soon after this varied reprise, the music suddenly ends, as if to say: what was that about?
[Article taken from Philharmonia Orchestra's website]
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As you have doubtless heard by now, we are coming up on the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The groundwork of that infamously riotous premiere was laid by the much less notorious debut of a ballet that was in many ways more revolutionary. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes premiered Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography of the short ballet Jeux at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 15, 1913, at which Pierre Monteux was also the conductor of Debussy's startling score. It would be the last orchestral score that Debussy completed before his death in 1918, and many writers have commented on its originality and daring, not least Pierre Boulez, who saw in it a foreshadowing of later developments in serialism.
As Vaslav Nijinsky recounted in some detail in his diary, Diaghilev's original idea for the ballet was a scenario about a homosexual encounter involving three men. In recognition of the difficulty such a story would have posed, even for the audience of the Ballets Russes, Nijinsky altered the story instead to an erotic meeting of a young man, danced by Nijinsky himself (at one point, to underscore the ambiguity of the situation, he planned to dance the role en pointe in women's ballet shoes), and two young women. To emphasize the playful nature of these events -- the title means "Play" or "Games" -- the action unfolded during a tennis match on a dusk-darkened court.
Somewhat incredibly, we have reviewed the piece live only once in the history of Ionarts, at a concert by the San Francisco Symphony in 2006. The orchestration of Jeux is among Debussy's most vivid, with glistening string divisi and knotted winds -- the whole-tone chord clusters in the prelude, which return more than once in the score, are one of many unforgettable mottos. Myriam Chimènes, who edited the score of Jeux for the Debussy Edition Critique, wrote about the timbres in the score at length for an article in Debussy Studies. She quotes Debussy writing to Andre Caplet about the score: "How was I able to forget the troubles of this world and write music which is almost cheerful, and alive with quaint gestures?" He also described the sort of orchestration he was looking for (he completed the piano score first, as was his usual practice): "I'm thinking of that orchestral color which seems to be lit from behind, of which there are such wonderful examples in Parsifal."
Debussy uses the brass -- 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba -- sparingly, at big climaxes or with mutes. The woodwind section gets more work, especially at the big climaxes, often the only points where the full complement plays (2 piccolos, 2 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, and 3 bassoons). There is even a part for (presumably contrabass) sarrusophone, which does not come in until well into the score (p. 69, after rehearsal 47) and is now mostly played, I think, on contrabassoon. The percussion (timpani, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, and cymbals) is often combined evocatively with the sounds of celesta and two harps.
Many recordings of Jeux have been in my ears, and I like many of them, including Boulez (Cleveland Orchestra, DG), Maazel (Vienna Philharmonic, RCA), the languorous Charles Dutoit (Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Decca), and the slightly nervous Christian Thielemann (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, live in 2002). My favorite at the moment, however, is a recent recording by Jun Märkl and the Orchestre National de Lyon, in the first volume of their complete recording of Debussy's orchestral works. The sound is beautifully detailed and captures a vividly nuanced reading, with all of Debussy's many tempo changes -- one every two bars, as one wag once jokingly put it -- given a fluidity like few others. While some hastier performances can come in under 19 and even under 18 minutes, Märkl's luxurious pacing extends out to 19:25, while still keeping the "dance" episodes -- playful evocations of the waltz and other forms -- energized.
Jeux is thought to be the first ballet ever danced in contemporary dress, with the costumes by Léon Bakst based on early 20th-century tennis outfits. You can watch an attempted reconstruction of Nijinsky's choreography, via the invaluable YouTube: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3. I had hopes for a production of the ballet this year for the anniversary, but it has not happened yet -- the Washington Ballet's last performance of Jeux was over 20 years ago. For further reading, Richard Buckle's Nijinsky: A Life of Genius and Madness brings together some newspaper pieces from around the time of the premiere, including reviews and an interesting interview that Nijinsky gave to Gil Blas about the piece. In a chapter ("L'Adorable Arabesque") in her book Mallarmé and Debussy: Unheard Music, Unseen Text, Elizabeth McCombie has written a sophisticated comparison of Debussy's score for Jeux to Stéphane Mallarmé's disruptive poem Un coup de dés, in which the poet claimed he was after something like the effect of words given timing like "music heard in concert."
[Article taken from Ionarts.com]
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Debussy's
Jeux is not only one of the most beautiful orchestral works I've ever heard, but it is also one of the most mysterious pieces of music created in the early 20th Century. Of course, Stravinsky's
Le sacre du printemps would go on to become a masterpiece not long after
Jeux was premiered by the Ballet Russes and be cemented into the short list of landmark works from the 20th Century. But as much as I love
Le sacre (and I do love it a lot), there is something even more unsettling about
Jeux. The music never truly finds its own footing --- it's constantly changing, morphing into one phrase to another with an almost breathlessness that doesn't really allow the listener to understand what had just happened. I find it utterly beguiling from start to finish. What do you believe this music was trying to achieve? What was on Debussy's mind during the conception of this work? These are questions I've asked myself and have tried to find with no avail, but this description of the ballet's plot leaves one scratching their head:
"The scene is a garden at dusk; a tennis ball has been lost; a boy and two girls are searching for it. The artificial light of the large electric lamps shedding fantastic rays about them suggests the idea of childish games: they play hide and seek, they try to catch one another, they quarrel, they sulk without cause. The night is warm, the sky is bathed in pale light; they embrace. But the spell is broken by another tennis ball thrown in mischievously by an unknown hand. Surprised and alarmed, the boy and girls disappear into the nocturnal depths of the garden." - Introduction of the ballet at its' 1913 premiere
Okay, now I'm truly confused. ;D Anyway, I just wanted to start a thread on this work because I do feel it's an important work not only in Debussy's incredible oeuvre, but it also remains one of the milestones in 20th Century orchestral music, IMHO. What's your take on all of this? Love the work? Hate the work? Please discuss.
Listened to it many times, never thought much of it, probably my least favorite Debussy work but somehow finds its way into almost Debussy CD I have. About 15 minutes longer than it really ought to be in my view. The "plot" if you can call it that certainly doesn't help, whether it is about kids chasing tennis balls something else.
About 10 years ago I read some correspondence between Boulez and Stockhausen. It's hard to overestimate how important Jeux was to Boulez especially, because of the form, what he saw as constantly fresh, constantly renewing itself.
For this reason, and despite being rather unsympathetic to Debussy's chromaticism, over the years I've collected recordings of Jeux by composers sympathetic to Boulez and Stockhausen. Bruno Maderna, Herman Scherchen and Hans Rosbaud all played it and were at various times recorded. However I have a favourite and it's none of those: it's this one from Inghelbrecht.
(https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0886/9226/products/inghelbrechtdebussyerato160113.jpg?v=1521730056)
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 22, 2019, 05:08:38 PM
Listened to it many times, never thought much of it, probably my least favorite Debussy work but somehow finds its way into almost Debussy CD I have. About 15 minutes longer than it really ought to be in my view. The "plot" if you can call it that certainly doesn't help, whether it is about kids chasing tennis balls something else.
More or less my feelings though I can't say that I have listened to it many times. I first encountered it on LP (Boulez) and it did nothing for me. The sleeve note gave no indication of the scenario, not that it would have helped. Acquired a few more versions over the years as part of box sets or albums. Listened to it once each time and each time it reminded me why I don't like it.
I don't like
The Rite of Spring either.
I love Debussy and I like Jeux, but isn't this in the wrong forum?
Quote from: Tsaraslondon on April 23, 2019, 05:59:32 AM
I love Debussy and I like Jeux, but isn't this in the wrong forum?
No. This is the description of this section: This board is for discussion of all vocal, opera and staged music,
including ballet.Special emphasis to the bolded text. ;) :)
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 23, 2019, 07:23:49 AM
???
Shock! Horror! This has been discussed to death elsewhere and I don't want to open old wounds.
Here's a comparative listening
http://classik.forumactif.com/t7560-ecoute-comparee-debussy-jeux?highlight=Jeux
(just started to listen to Baudo as a result, I've heard him play a Pelléas I liked.
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 23, 2019, 06:09:48 AM
No. This is the description of this section: This board is for discussion of all vocal, opera and staged music, including ballet.
Special emphasis to the bolded text. ;) :)
Now I never noticed that. Mind you, this seems to be the first post I've seen about a ballet in this forum.
Quote from: Biffo on April 23, 2019, 07:43:06 AM
Shock! Horror! This has been discussed to death elsewhere and I don't want to open old wounds.
Good idea. :)
Quote from: Tsaraslondon on April 23, 2019, 08:41:30 AM
Now I never noticed that. Mind you, this seems to be the first post I've seen about a ballet in this forum.
Oh, trust me, there have been ballet posts here before, as well a more than one discussion of whether there
ought to be ballet posts here.
Quote from: Wendell_E on April 24, 2019, 02:16:33 AM
Oh, trust me, there have been ballet posts here before, as well a more than one discussion of whether there ought to be ballet posts here.
In all fairness to Tsaralondon, I do feel that ballet should have its' own separate section on GMG since this is a rather wide genre.
I'm not one to be too concerned with whether threads are in the right board. But the description says "including ballet and other staged music." I interpret that as inviting discussion of ballet performances, with dancing. Discussions limited to the music, without reference to staged ballet performance would probably get more attention on the general music board. Of course some threads will fall in the grey area.
Quote from: Ghost of Baron Scarpia on April 24, 2019, 11:35:19 AM
I'm not one to be too concerned with whether threads are in the right board. But the description says "including ballet and other staged music." I interpret that as inviting discussion of ballet performances, with dancing. Discussions limited to the music, without reference to staged ballet performance would probably get more attention on the general music board. Of course some threads will fall in the grey area.
Does it matter? It's not like the Opera and Vocal section gets all that much traffic anyway.
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 24, 2019, 11:42:08 AM
Does it matter? It's not like the Opera and Vocal section gets all that much traffic anyway.
Sadly :(
Interesting that there's so little interest in this piece, with most people here commenting to say they don't like it or saying nothing!
In Jean Barraque's book on Debussy he says this about Jeux (my rough translation!) Maybe it really is very hard to make work in performance and I've been a bit lucky finding good ones.
QuoteDebussy takes the opportunity to create a broken (fractionner) rhythmic and melodic style, which accentuates a an almost fragmented (morceler) orchestration. This orchestral technique lets him break up (briser) the melody. scattering short motifs to different parts of the orchestra. In this way he makes a sort of "timbre scale" (gamme de timbres)
Anyway I found this a nice idea to think about while listening (I just listened to Bruno Maderna playing it) Obviously there's a relationship to Webern's
Klangfarbenmelodie, but also, I think to the French baroque lute idea of
style brisé.
I recommend Maderna's performance, which is on symphonyshare, along with Ighelbrecht's, which remains my favourite, partly because of the sound, the colours. (grey shades in both cases!)
I, for one, think
Jeux is nothing short of miraculous.
Debussy at the top of his game... The description by
Barraqué that
Mandryka quoted above is very accurate, I's say (I really should read
Barraqué's book on
Debussy!).
I own several performances on CD (
Boulez, of course, but also the pioneering
de Sabata, and many more), and it is
Maderna's version with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra that made the strongest impression on me:
Quote from: ritter on December 02, 2017, 08:57:07 AM
A new arrival:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81DfWKpzLfL._SL1400_.jpg)
So far, Debussy's Jeux, in a performance that is simply outstanding!...The transparency that Maderna achieves in this miraculous score is stunning, with every single line being audible, and brought to the forefront just when it should. And the phrasing--paramount in this "stop-and-go work", where themes are exposed to then disappear, but everything hangs together so coherently---is just perfect. The tempo is leisurely, with Maderna taking ca. 19'50" (vs. e.g. 16'03" for Boulez on DG, or 18'15" for Martinon on EMI), but never feels slack, and tension is maintained throughout the piece. The members of the Berlin Radio Symphony orchestra play as if their lives were at stake. Sound is really vivid for a 1964 broadcast.
...
There's another
Maderna recording with the ORTF (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,21492.msg1164621.html#msg1164621) which is also good, but not at the same level as the Berlin one IMO.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 25, 2019, 12:08:54 AM
Interesting that there's so little interest in this piece, with most people here commenting to say they don't like it or saying nothing!
In Jean Barraque's book on Debussy he says this about Jeux (my rough translation!) Maybe it really is very hard to make work in performance and I've been a bit lucky finding good ones.
Anyway I found this a nice idea to think about while listening (I just listened to Bruno Maderna playing it) Obviously there's a relationship to Webern's Klangfarbenmelodie, but also, I think to the French baroque lute idea of style brisé.
I recommend Maderna's performance, which is on symphonyshare, along with Ighelbrecht's, which remains my favourite, partly because of the sound, the colours. (grey shades in both cases!)
Debussy clearly means more to you than he does to me - he wouldn't even make it into my top 30 favourite composers.
My favourite works are all orchestral -
Trois Nocturnes
Images pour orchestre
La Mer
Faun
That is about it. I usually enjoy the String Quartet but don't listen to it very often. I dip into the piano works occasionally. The rest I can live without.
Quote from: Biffo on April 23, 2019, 07:43:06 AM
Shock! Horror! This has been discussed to death elsewhere and I don't want to open old wounds.
The whole idea is to open new ones. >:D
Quote from: springrite on April 25, 2019, 12:59:58 AM
The whole idea is to open new ones. >:D
It usually ends in tears (not mine).
Quote from: ritter on April 25, 2019, 12:50:39 AM
I, for one, think Jeux is nothing short of miraculous. Debussy at the top of his game... The description by Barraqué that Mandryka quoted above is very accurate, I's say (I really should read Barraqué's book on Debussy!).
I own several performances on CD (Boulez, of course, but also the pioneering de Sabata, and many more), and it is Maderna's version with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra that made the strongest impression on me:
There's another Maderna recording with the ORTF (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,21492.msg1164621.html#msg1164621) which is also good, but not at the same level as the Berlin one IMO.
I've just found an affordable copy of the Berlin performance and ordered it, so you'd better be right!
Quote from: Mandryka on April 25, 2019, 02:58:09 AM
I've just found an affordable copy of the Berlin performance and ordered it, so you'd better be right!
Good thing it was affordable; had it been outrageously expensive, then I'd
really be in trouble (in the unlikely event you don't like it)... :D
Quote from: ritter on April 25, 2019, 03:45:49 AM
Good thing it was affordable; had it been outrageously expensive, then I'd really be in trouble (in the unlikely event you don't like it)... :D
Discogs, the seller still has to confirm.
One additional comment: yes, the use of orchestral timbre might be masterful and very important in this score, but....surprisngly, Jeux works remarkably well "in black and white", in Debussy's own piano reduction. Bavouzet's recording on Chandos is excellent!
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iU0%2BOzcRL._SX425_.jpg)
Back to the topic, I can't say Jeux made much of an impression on me. It struck me as sort of an experiment on Debussy's part, constructing music based on a series of instants or gestures, with correlation from one instant to the next almost vanishing. I looked back at my listening notes and did find mention of listening to it some years ago, but I didn't note any reaction to it, other than that the performance exhibited "clarity." It doesn't seem that Debussy followed up on this style of composition, although it was evidently influential for Boulez and some others.
Quote from: Ghost of Baron Scarpia on April 25, 2019, 11:11:16 AM
Back to the topic, I can't say Jeux made much of an impression on me. It struck me as sort of an experiment on Debussy's part, constructing music based on a series of instants or gestures, with correlation from one instant to the next almost vanishing. I looked back at my listening notes and did find mention of listening to it some years ago, but I didn't note any reaction to it, other than that the performance exhibited "clarity." It doesn't seem that Debussy followed up on this style of composition, although it was evidently influential for Boulez and some others.
Jeux, composed in 1913, was one of the many styles that Debussy was experimenting with in his 'late' period, which, sadly, ended when he passed away in 1918. If you look at the works composed during this period (besides
Jeux) like
En blanc et noir,
La boîte à joujoux, the sonatas, the
Études,
Six épigraphes antiques,
Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, among others, you can hear him being decidedly eclectic in style as I believe he was moving further and further away from the whole 'Impressionist' label that critics tagged him with. I have no problem with people who dislike
Jeux and say negative things about it. I will say it took me some time to appreciate it, but when I did, the late period works opened up completely for me. I think the piece is incredible and can only agree with the enthusiasm that several other members like Rafael and Mandryka have shown for it.
Jeux is a work that sounds like someone not only experimenting and forging some kind of new style, but I think it's gorgeous in it's enigmatism and just the sheer sonority of the whole piece is intoxicating to me.
Quote from: ritter on April 25, 2019, 08:37:52 AM
One additional comment: yes, the use of orchestral timbre might be masterful and very important in this score, but....surprisngly, Jeux works remarkably well "in black and white", in Debussy's own piano reduction. Bavouzet's recording on Chandos is excellent!
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iU0%2BOzcRL._SX425_.jpg)
Thanks for mentioning this, I knew about the piano reduction through a recording by Alice Adler, but this is better sounding. Do we know why Debussy made the piano score -- was it just for the dance rehearsals?
There is also to be a four handed version which Francois Frederic Guy recorded with Bavouzet, it's Bavouzet's transcription. I haven't heard it properly but the beginning sounds excellent.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71OzGvu0qmL._SX355_.jpg)
I don't like Debussy when it sounds gaudy, and so these grey colours of the piano suit me very well.
Quote from: Ghost of Baron Scarpia on April 25, 2019, 11:11:16 AM
music based on a series of instants or gestures, with correlation from one instant to the next almost vanishing.
Music that drifts like dreams, and plunges like desire.
I suppose the piano reduction was made for practical purposes, but I'll have to check on that. In any event, as is often the case with Debussy and Ravel, this transcription is a valid piece of music on its own, and works beautifully.
AFAIK, the piano duet reduction isn't by Debussy himself, but by Léon Rqoues (as per the Bossey & Hawkes website). I haven't heard it.
The only other recording of the piano version I know is that of Jean-Pierre Armengaud in the Warner "Complete Worls" set. It's nowhere as succesful as Bavouzet's IMO.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 26, 2019, 12:26:18 AM
Music that drifts like dreams, and plunges like desire.
Excellent! I listen to Jeux quite often: I have Yan Pascal Tortelier/ Boulez & Rattle.
Quote from: ritter on April 26, 2019, 12:35:47 AM
I suppose the piano reduction was made for practical purposes, but I'll have to check on that. In any event, as is often the case with Debussy and Ravel, this transcription is a valid piece of music on its own, and works beautifully.
AFAIK, the piano duet reduction isn't by Debussy himself, but by Léon Rqoues (as per the Bossey & Hawkes website). I haven't heard it.
The only other recording of the piano version I know is that of Jean-Pierre Armengaud in the Warner "Complete Worls" set. It's nowhere as succesful as Bavouzet's IMO.
The booklet says that the duet that Bavouzet plays is by Bavouzet himself.
Quote from: ritter on April 26, 2019, 12:35:47 AM
I suppose the piano reduction was made for practical purposes, but I'll have to check on that. In any event, as is often the case with Debussy and Ravel, this transcription is a valid piece of music on its own, and works beautifully.
AFAIK, the piano duet reduction isn't by Debussy himself, but by Léon Rqoues (as per the Bossey & Hawkes website). I haven't heard it.
The only other recording of the piano version I know is that of Jean-Pierre Armengaud in the Warner "Complete Worls" set. It's nowhere as succesful as Bavouzet's IMO.
I'll have to listen to this as I own the Bavouzet set (and the Warner, too, of course), but I have to say, I'm not completely sold on Bavouzet's Debussy recordings. They just seem to lack a certain magic my favorite performances have. How do you feel about Bavouzet's traversal of Debussy, Rafael?
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 26, 2019, 06:11:58 AM
I'll have to listen to this as I own the Bavouzet set (and the Warner, too, of course), but I have to say, I'm not completely sold on Bavouzet's Debussy recordings. They just seem to lack a certain magic my favorite performances have. How do you feel about Bavouzet's traversal of Debussy, Rafael?
I think
Bavouzet does a very good job in
Debussy. I got vol. 5 for
Jeux, and then picked up two additional volumes when they were on sale at La Boite à Musique in Brussels. So I don't know his
Préludes or his
Images and
Études.
I like his muscular, straightforward approach to the music (those pieces I've listened to played by him, that is), but usually turn to other pianists' more or less complete sets (my favourites being
Jacobs,
Ciccolini and
Paraskivesco). Still, I think
Bavouzet's
Jeux is an extraordinary performance, and a revelatory one.
Quote from: ritter on April 26, 2019, 12:22:43 PM
I think Bavouzet does a very good job in Debussy. I got vol. 5 for Jeux, and then picked up two additional volumes when they were on sale at La Boite à Musique in Brussels. So I don't know his Préludes or his Images and Études.
I like his muscular, straightforward approach to the music (those pieces I've listened to played by him, that is), but usually turn to other pianists' more or less complete sets (my favourites being Jacobs, Ciccolini and Paraskivesco). Still, I think Bavouzet's Jeux is an extraordinary performance, and a revelatory one.
I'll have to give Bavouzet a better listen. I wasn't too thrilled with his Debussy whenever I heard it. To me, it's missing something. Perhaps some of the mystique that I hear in Jacobs, Kocsis, Sasaki, Kodama, among others? I'll have to give his
Études a listen as if he fails here, then he pretty much will fail everywhere else, IMHO. It also doesn't help that I'm extremely critical of pianists who play this piece as not only is this work of my favorites from Debussy, but I know it almost from top to bottom and everything in-between. I don't like being this picky, but I just can't help it. There's a certain way I like this work performed, but this isn't to say the performances I don't like are terrible, but they're just not to my tastes.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71UeDg3AkTL._SL1221_.jpg)
HIP Jeux! And even better, a recording which has managed to get the backs up of people, always a good sign
Quote from: Duthois on amazon.fr
Si l'intérêt d'un tel disque, tel qu'il nous est présenté, réside dans la redécouverte des timbres instrumentaux d'époque, il faudrait au minimum que la prise de son soit de haut niveau. Ce qui hélas n'est pas le cas: scène sonore très artificielle avec une profondeur d'orchestre inhabituelle, des cordes au premier plan et des vents repoussés dans le lointain, le tout noyé dans une réverbération de hall de gare. Si la transparence est satisfaisante dans les passages calmes, les tutti d'orchestre sont totalement confus avec une surabondance du registre grave boursouflé qui ajoute à la confusion (Fêtes). Dans ces conditions il parait difficile de jouir des sonorités promises. Par ailleurs la direction d'orchestre me parait manquer de subtilité, de souplesse, et les cordes semblent bien raides. Allons, nous avons suffisamment de témoignages sonores de qualité pour trouver ailleurs un réel plaisir (Inghelbrecht, Ansermet, Munch, Barbirolli...).
The interpretation is interesting, in the same way that for example, the recording of the trio with Moyse, Ginot and Laskine is interesting, or Cortot's preludes, and it stands apart from the more kaleidoscopic and indulgent Debussy style which maybe became the norm after the war. I wish Francois Xavier Roth had written something about the interpretation, the booklet is a lost opportunity.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 26, 2019, 12:19:31 AM
Thanks for mentioning this, I knew about the piano reduction through a recording by Alice Adler, but this is better sounding. Do we know why Debussy made the piano score -- was it just for the dance rehearsals?
There is also to be a four handed version which Francois Frederic Guy recorded with Bavouzet, it's Bavouzet's transcription. I haven't heard it properly but the beginning sounds excellent.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71OzGvu0qmL._SX355_.jpg)
I don't like Debussy when it sounds gaudy, and so these grey colours of the piano suit me very well.
An interesting comment. Gustave Doret, conductor of the first performance of
Prelude a L'apres- midi d'un faune described how Debussy played that work to him on the piano from the proofs of the orchestral score. He was amazed at the composer's ability to reproduce at the keyboard all the orchestral colours and the nuances of the individual instruments, thus creating an apparently perfect interpretation of the work.
Cntrastingly, Debussy told Ysaye how he wanted experiment with the different combinations with a single colour in the same way a painter might make a study in grey. Eventually, he produced
En blanc et noir; according to Debussy each of these pieces was like 'the greys of Velazquez'.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 27, 2019, 12:00:29 AM
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71UeDg3AkTL._SL1221_.jpg)
HIP Jeux! And even better, a recording which has managed to get the backs up of people, always a good sign
The interpretation is interesting, in the same way that for example, the recording of the trio with Moyse, Ginot and Laskine is interesting, or Cortot's preludes, and it stands apart from the more kaleidoscopic and indulgent Debussy style which maybe became the norm after the war. I wish Francois Xavier Roth had written something about the interpretation, the booklet is a lost opportunity.
I've never considered myself a part of the HIP parade, but Roth's performance of
Jeux is a pretty good one. Honestly, I don't really hear much difference between the modern instrument performances and this HIP one. Perhaps the strings have a bit of a more edge to them? I'm not quite sure, but Roth certainly doesn't displace Shui on BIS or even Cluytens on EMI (Warner), then there's Haitink and Boulez. There are many great performances.
Quote from: Biffo on April 27, 2019, 02:03:43 AM
An interesting comment. Gustave Doret, conductor of the first performance of Prelude a L'apres- midi d'un faune described how Debussy played that work to him on the piano from the proofs of the orchestral score. He was amazed at the composer's ability to reproduce at the keyboard all the orchestral colours and the nuances of the individual instruments, thus creating an apparently perfect interpretation of the work.
Cntrastingly, Debussy told Ysaye how he wanted experiment with the different combinations with a single colour in the same way a painter might make a study in grey. Eventually, he produced En blanc et noir; according to Debussy each of these pieces was like 'the greys of Velazquez'.
Debussy was an incredible pianist and reading through through his biography, you realize just how important the piano was to not only in his own training as a musician, but also as a composer. To have written so much incredible music for the piano certainly indicates that he had an affinity for the instrument unlike any other. This isn't to say, however, his writing for violin or harp weren't amazing, because they were, but the piano is in the foreground and background of everything he had composed.
En blanc et noir is a gorgeous work, btw. Love it.
Quote from: Biffo on April 27, 2019, 02:03:43 AMContrastingly, Debussy told Ysaye how he wanted experiment with the different combinations with a single colour in the same way a painter might make a study in grey. Eventually, he produced En blanc et noir; according to Debussy each of these pieces was like 'the greys of Velazquez'.
Speaking of 'grey', I like this quote from the man himself:
"The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams."
I feel rather excited because I've just heard a fabulous performance of Jeux, one that, at least while you're listening to it, really makes you forget about all the others you've heard. Unfortunately it's not a commercial release, it's by Michael Gielen with RSO Stuttgart, from a concert on 25 February 1972. If anyone wants it they can PM me -- or if you can get it from symphonyshare, it's there. The sound is fine.
There is soon going to be a Michael Gielen Edition released by Naxos, but as far as I can see it includes no Jeux.
There was an old Gielen Edition series with a Jeux, and that's still available through amazon (ASIN: B001J03F1Q). I haven't heard it, and I don't know the date of the recording. I note that it lasts 17.48 while mine lasts 19,06
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511ViaAnXGL._SS500_.jpg)
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 27, 2019, 05:52:37 AM
I've never considered myself a part of the HIP parade, but Roth's performance of Jeux is a pretty good one.
It's OK. I think it's harder than you suggest to really make it sound as well as it should, I don't really think Roth succeeds at that.
Some comments on
Jeux (and on recordings of the work) by
Andrew Clements for The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/feb/23/classicalmusicandopera) (from 2001):
QuoteThe poème dansé that is arguably Debussy's supreme achievement, and certainly his greatest orchestral work, was written in the astonishingly short period of three weeks in August 1912, though the premiere, danced by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, did not take place until the following May. Perhaps it was the very speed of composition that allowed Debussy's musical thoughts freer than usual rein, and gave an intuitive shape to the piece that came to closer than ever before to the ideal of free musical association to which so much of his mature music aspires.
Even an "impressionist" masterpiece such as La Mer has a strong symphonic framework to bolster its evocative imagery, but Jeux is sustained on a web of tenuously connected ideas in which one motif seems to spawn the next, so that nothing ever returns in identical fashion. The scenario to which it was originally danced seems almost irrelevant nowadays. "There is a park, a tennis court; there is a chance meeting of two girls and a young man seeking a lost ball; a nocturnal landscape, and a suggestion of something sinister in the darkening shadows" - that was how Debussy described it in a letter to the Paris newspaper Le Matin. But it was the fact that the score seem to score defy rigorous analysis that raised into a modernist icon for the post-Webern generation of serialists, who pored over the subtle interrelations of its themes and the ambiguity of its overall form, clothed in ever-changing orchestral colours.
Jeux has never been as popular in the concert hall and on disc as La Mer and Debussy's orchestral Images - partly, I suspect, because it sets orchestras and conductors such problems of balance, phrasing and continuity. Some of the recorded performances show the difficulties all too clearly - Yan Pascal Tortelier's version (Chandos) is not played precisely enough, while Jean Martinon's (EMI) is overblown and Charles Dutoit's (Decca) too matter-of-fact; even Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony can't resist self-consciously drawing out some of the score's melodies in a piece where suggestion and understatement are everything.
The two conductors who get it right could hardly be more different. Bernard Haitink's old Philips performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra is a marvel of precision and colour, and reissued in a mid-price two-disc survey of Debussy's orchestral music it is a marvellous bargain. But the more recent of Pierre Boulez's two versions, with the Cleveland Orchestra, is as near definitive as could be imagined in such an elusive work. All its details are perfectly realised, and Boulez weaves delicately coloured webs of connections between all the constituents.
· Key Recording: Boulez (Deutsche Grammophon)
Quote from: Mandryka on April 27, 2019, 12:22:22 PM
I feel rather excited because I've just heard a fabulous performance of Jeux, one that, at least while you're listening to it, really makes you forget about all the others you've heard. Unfortunately it's not a commercial release, it's by Michael Gielen with RSO Stuttgart, from a concert on 25 February 1972. If anyone wants it they can PM me -- or if you can get it from symphonyshare, it's there. The sound is fine.
There is soon going to be a Michael Gielen Edition released by Naxos, but as far as I can see it includes no Jeux.
There was an old Gielen Edition series with a Jeux, and that's still available through amazon (ASIN: B001J03F1Q). I haven't heard it, and I don't know the date of the recording. I note that it lasts 17.48 while mine lasts 19,06
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511ViaAnXGL._SS500_.jpg)
I imagine Gielen doing quite well in
Jeux. It seems right up his alley with the subtle, shifting tempi and array of colors the work presents.
Quote from: Mandryka on April 26, 2019, 12:26:18 AM
Music that drifts like dreams, and plunges like desire.
An excellent way of putting it - much better than "fragmentary" or whatever.
Though I don't play it often I like and admire the work. I was introduced to Debussy in mt teens by a friend who claimed D. as his favorite composer and Jeux as hus favorite work. At the time I found it opaque and overwhelming, but not so now. He had the Haitink recording, which is the one I later acquired, and am playing now,
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 22, 2019, 05:08:38 PM
Listened to it many times, never thought much of it, probably my least favorite Debussy work but somehow finds its way into almost Debussy CD I have. About 15 minutes longer than it really ought to be in my view. The "plot" if you can call it that certainly doesn't help, whether it is about kids chasing tennis balls something else.
Mentally "lose" the tennis balls, then; let it be about the journey and not the destination.
Quote from: springrite on April 25, 2019, 12:59:58 AM
The whole idea is to open new ones. >:D
I want to party with you!
Quote from: SimonNZ on April 27, 2019, 03:47:44 PM
An excellent way of putting it - much better than "fragmentary" or whatever.
Though I don't play it often I like and admire the work. I was introduced to Debussy in mt teens by a friend who claimed D. as his favorite composer and Jeux as hus favorite work. At the time I found it opaque and overwhelming, but not so now. He had the Haitink recording, which is the one I later acquired, and am playing now,
Have your thoughts changed on it since then? What did you think of the Haitink performance? By the way, your friend sounds cool. Anyone who is a Debussy fanatic like I am is a friend of mine. 8)
Here's my translation (very bad, very quick) of a letter which Boulez wrote to Stockhausen -- this is what got me interested in Jeux years ago, when I was investigating Pli selon pli.
QuoteIn my opinion I believe that the last artcle you sent me signifies something which is for me very important: the desire for a non-homogeneous development period [temps de développement], while on the other hand you're keen above all else on a unified development period. I believe that the big new thing that music needs is that the unity [temps unitaire] is pulverised. You called this the French way of thinking. But I believe that in saying that you're passing over the important problem. For God's sake, reread Joyce and Mallarmé's Un coup de dés, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about, which has nothing to do with either Spring or Summer or whatever season. Are you familiar with Rambaud (Saison en Enfer)? You'll see just as well there what I meant by "a new dimension to the work." Same for Cézanne, more important on many points than Klee (same Debussy-Webern) Fundamentally the poetic inheritance Cézanne -- Mallarmé -- Debussy is still with us . That's not been well understood yet. Cubism was just a renaissance of Cézanne, after Mallarmé they've [on] just battled against procociousness, like in the light-weight Appolinaire. After Debussy, they've only wanted "french classicism" You know that I loathe everything that's involved in French Tradition and what you can see in Cézanne, Mallarmé and Debussy isn't just most obsolete aspects of their work, very fortunately they go way beyond that.
So I have trouble believing that having studied Jeux closely, you haven't yet seen this non-homogenious development period, his formal experiments proceding by characteristics and not by schematisation. . .
Interesting read, Mandryka.
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 28, 2019, 06:56:52 AM
Interesting read, Mandryka.
I have no idea what that little exerpt means.
But I think this is an interesting take by Boulez on
Jeux:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_m788t0VXY&t=301s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_m788t0VXY&t=301s)
I like how he says
Jeux "isn't a striking piece" at around the 14s mark.
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 28, 2019, 07:48:46 AM
I have no idea what that little exerpt means.
But I think this is an interesting take by Boulez on Jeux:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_m788t0VXY&t=301s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_m788t0VXY&t=301s)
I like how he says Jeux "isn't a striking piece" at around the 14s mark.
I take what most conductors say about music with a grain of salt. If it wasn't 'a striking piece', he wouldn't have gushed over it for years and performed it. He liked the work a lot. Boulez's personality has always been quite perplexing to me.
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 28, 2019, 07:48:46 AM
I like how he says Jeux "isn't a striking piece" at around the 14s mark.
He doesn't say that it isn't striking, he says it's a work which is not very "démonstrative" -- i.e. it's not ostentatious.
Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on April 28, 2019, 07:48:46 AM
I have no idea what that little exerpt means.
I'll be able to explain it later, hopefully.
Quote from: Mirror Image on April 27, 2019, 06:03:03 PM
Have your thoughts changed on it since then? What did you think of the Haitink performance? By the way, your friend sounds cool. Anyone who is a Debussy fanatic like I am is a friend of mine. 8)
The Haitink recording, to my ears, makes the piece structurally logical, all cut from the same cloth and the perfect length - I don't hear the "fragmentary" thing in it that others have complained about, which is perhaps why I've never gone looking for another recording and can't say how it compares.
My friend was a huge jazz fan with an enormous collection (including every ECM release up to that time arranged by catalogue number) and having him throw random things on the turntable was a real education when I was in my teens. Debussy and Ravel were his favorite composers not because they used early jazz in their music, but because of the influence their non-jazz works had on later jazz, which he would constantly point out.
Quote from: SimonNZ on April 28, 2019, 04:17:05 PM
The Haitink recording, to my ears, makes the piece structurally logical, all cut from the same cloth and the perfect length - I don't hear the "fragmentary" thing in it that others have complained about, which is perhaps why I've never gone looking for another recording and can't say how it compares.
My friend was a huge jazz fan with an enormous collection (including every ECM release up to that time arranged by catalogue number) and having him throw random things on the turntable was a real education when I was in my teens. Debussy and Ravel were his favorite composers not because they used early jazz in their music, but because of the influence their non-jazz works had on later jazz, which he would constantly point out.
There's an arch created in
Jeux. I don't think of it as fragmentary either. The direction of the work is actually well-laid out and if you listen to the work enough times, you begin to hear the structure unfold. For me, it is Debussy's most bizarre yet alluring orchestral work.