Monet: London, Houses of Parliament, The sun shining through the fog Photo: Claude Monet, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) composed this second book of Preludes in 1912-13. There are 12 preludes and on the score he puts the titles for each of them at the end, perhaps so the pianist can imagine their own image first.
1. Brouillards (Fog)
2. Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves)
3. La Puerta del Vino (The Wine Gate)
4. Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses (Fairies are exquisite dancers)
5. Bruyères (Heather)
6. General Lavine—excentric
7. La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (The terrace of spectators by the light of the moon)
8. Ondine (Undine, the water nymph)
9. Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.
10. Canope (Cover of an Egyptian funerary urn)
11. Les tierces alternées (Alternating thirds)
12. Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)
Related:
Read Gainsford Photo: Read Gainsford
Read Gainsford was born in New Zealand, he studied piano at the University of Auckland with Janetta MacStay and Bryan Sayer before moving to London where he worked at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a pupil of the renowned pedagogue Joan Havill. He moved to the USA to enter the doctoral program at Indiana University. He has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, making successful solo debuts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as playing in the Kennedy Center, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and others. Gainsford returns regularly to New Zealand to see family, perform, and teach.
Keen to work with other musicians, his latest collaborative project involves forming Trio Solis, a group dedicated to connecting with people beyond those who traditionally form audiences for classical music, and who made their Carnegie Hall debut in May 2009.
Formerly on the faculty of Ithaca College, where he received the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, he is now Associate Professor of Piano at Florida State University.
Recorded by RNZ Concert in July 2016 at the Wallace International Piano Festival in the University of Auckland School of Music.
Producer and engineer: Adrian Hollay
