Debussy: The Complete Preludes (Jumppanen)

One of the great peaks of the prelude literature for piano, alongside Chopin’s, Rachmaninoff’s and Scriabin’s (late) prelude sets. These works are consistently ingenious in the deployment of those devices that are now consistently associated with impressionism – modal colour, exotic scales (whole-tone, pentatonic, double harmonic, Hungarian), non-functional harmony (planing chords, purely colouristic intervals, hanging and extended chords), pedal points, timbral figuration. Interestingly, Book 2 is very different from Book 1: it’s far more pessimistic and abstract, so much so that it was greeted upon publication with some disappointment. Book 1’s fantasy has been replaced by a certain weary or ominous realism, and you get the feeling that Book 1 was more explicitly imagistic in nature, while Book 2 is symbolic – it’s going for what certain images and objects *mean*, rather than trying to depict them per se. Book 2 is also completely written on 3 staves – its sound is a bit more expansive and less propulsive,