Early Recordings of Gieseking’s Debussy

courtesy of Naxos of America

The latest Appian Publications & Recordings (APR) recording to come to my attention was released almost exactly a month ago. It is a two-CD collection of performances of the solo piano music by Claude Debussy performed by Walter Gieseking. Some readers may recall that, back in December of 2017, I wrote enthusiastically about the five-CD box set of the complete piano works of Debussy performed by Gieseking released by Warner Classics. Why am I revisiting this content almost five years later?

The answer can be found in the title of the new APR release: Debussy: The first Columbia recordings. The “complete” collection was based on recording sessions at Abbey Road made between 1951 and 1955. With only three exceptions, all of the APR tracks were recorded in the Thirties. The four remaining tracks were not recorded until after the conclusion of World War II. In other words this is the sort of content that promoters like to call “legendary.”

More often than not, however, such language often gets the Spock in me to raise my left eyebrow. Do these older recordings add to our appreciation of Debussy’s music presented to us through Gieseking’s interpretations? As usual, the answer is that sometimes they do; and sometimes they don’t.

Both Préludes books were recorded by Columbia in their entirety, and the remastering of the original recordings ranges from the impressive to the downright stunning. However, it is important to bear in mind that these preludes are studies in brevity. During the recording sessions, only one of those preludes, “La cathédral engloutie” was longer than five minutes. On the other hand, where some of the longer tracks are concerned, one gets the impression that Gieseking had to rush himself for the sake of making a “manageable” recording. By the early Fifties, technology had improved significantly, meaning that Gieseking did not have to worry about pressure from the recording engineers as he worked his way through the Debussy canon.

For my own part, I am perfectly happy to listen to the recorded results when Gieseking was clearly in his “comfort zone.” I would even suggest that there is much to learn through “side-by-side” listening to compare his approach to performance in the Thirties with that in the Fifties. Some may prefer just to “sit back and listen;” but they should probably stick with the Warner release. Those more interested in how different recording sessions may disclose different aspects of the performer’s personality would probably enjoy taking a deeper dive into content from two decidedly different decades.