Classic FM’s Rising Stars: 30 brilliant musicians we’re celebrating in 2022

Classic FM’s Rising Stars in 2022. Picture: Alamy/Rebecca Naen/Kaupo Kikkas

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

 

We’ve selected 30 outstanding young musicians for Classic FM’s Rising Stars 2022 – from cellists to clarinettists, and composers to conductors, from across the globe.

In the year that Classic FM celebrates its 30th birthday, we’ve compiled a list of 30 brilliant young musicians all under the age of 30.

The list has been compiled in collaboration with Julian Lloyd Webber, who hosted the radio series Rising Stars on Classic FM in 2021. Speaking to Classic FM, Lloyd Webber said: “It’s been incredibly exciting to work together with Classic FM on our second annual list of ‘30 under 30’ Rising Stars. These musicians are quite extraordinary and I can’t wait to share their brilliant talents with Classic FM’s listeners!”

Beginning on Monday 11 July, a recording by a different Rising Star will be played during each programme on Classic FM, beginning with Tim Lihoreau’s More Music Breakfast, and ending the following morning in Lucy Coward’s Early Breakfast show.

Read on to find out more about this year’s list of outstanding young musicians.

1. Bruce Liu, 25 – Canadian Pianist

   25-year-old pianist Bruce Liu shot to fame in 2021 after winning the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Born in Paris and growing up in Montreal, Liu made his performing debut at the age of 11 and has gone on to sign an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, releasing a debut album in November 2021.

2. Klaus Mäkelä, 26 – Finnish conductor

   At just 26 years of age, Klaus Mäkelä is chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, music director of the Orchestre de Paris, and artistic director of the Turku Music Festival in Finland. It was also recently announced that Mäkelä will take up a position with the Netherlands’ Concertgebouw Orchestra from next season, taking the helm as chief conductor from 2027. He is a Decca Classics artist, and in March 2022 released the complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies in an all-Finnish affair alongside the Oslo Philharmonic.

   

   Klaus Mäkelä. Picture: Mathias Benguigui / Pasco & Co

3. Leia Zhu, 15 – British violinist

   Leia Zhu made her performance debut aged four, and has since gone on to perform with renowned musicians and orchestras the world over. From the London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle to the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, Zhu was last year appointed artist in residence with the London Mozart Players.

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4. Plínio Fernandes, 27 – Brazilian guitarist

   In May 2022, record label Decca Gold announced the signing of Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes. He released a new album Saudade on 8 July, championing work by Brazilian composers including Heitor Villa-Lobos, and featuring collaborations with both Sheku and Braimah Kanneh-Mason.

   

   Plínio Fernandes, guitarist. Picture: Rebecca Naen

5. Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, 28 – South African soprano

   Growing up in the Limpopo province of South Africa, Masabane Cecilia is currently based in Europe and South Africa. She has graced the stage of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden under the baton of Antonio Pappano, where she was also part of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme in the 2019/20 season. More recently, she has performed in Bern, Moscow, Stellenbosch, and at Classic FM Live in the Royal Albert Hall in April 2022.

   

   Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha performs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Classic FM Live. Picture: Alamy

6. Isabelle Peters, 29 – British soprano

   For the 2021/22 season, Isabelle Peters was appointed Associate Artist at the Welsh National Opera, performing in Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville and more. She has previously appeared with the Waterperry, English National, and Garsington opera companies, and will make her debut at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury theatre in 2023.

7. Alexandra Whittingham, 25 – British guitarist

   Alumna of the Royal Academy of Music, Alexandra Whittingham’s debut album My European Journey was released in May 2021 and reached the top spot on two of the industry’s leading classical music charts. Whittingham has also reached the finals of various European guitar competitions, taking home first prize from the Edinburgh Guitar Competition in 2013.

8. Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, 19 – British pianist

   Jeneba Kanneh-Mason is an award-winning young pianist, currently studying at the Royal College of Music in London. She has performed across Europe and the Caribbean as well as frequent solo appearances with Chineke! Orchestra.

9. Theo Plath, 28 – German bassoonist

   Theo Plath was appointed principal bassoon of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2019, and has also appeared as guest principal bassoon with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the WDR Sinfonieorchester. Plath released a CD as soloist with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in 2020, with another album with fellow members of the Monet Wind Quintet due to be released soon.

   

   Theo Plath, bassoonist. Picture: Marco Borggreve

10. Stephen Waarts, 26 – Dutch-American violinist

    Stephen Waarts’ performance credentials include the Munich Symphony, Brandenburg Symphony, and Camerata Schweiz orchestras, under the esteemed batons of such conductors as András Schiff, Christoph Eschenbach, Marin Alsop and Elim Chan. 2022 saw his debut concerto recording with Camerata Schweiz and Howard Griffiths, with a performance of Mozart’s first violin concerto.

11. Coco Tomita, 20 – Japanese violinist

    Coco Tomita burst onto the classical music scene in 2020, having already won first place at competitions in Vienna, Berlin, Eastbourne and Baden-Baden. She made her performance debut aged 10 at Cadogan Hall and has performed in countries across Europe as well as a tour of her home country, Japan.

12. Alexandre Kantorow, 25 – French pianist

    In 2019, at the age of 22, Alexandre Kantorow made history as the first French pianist to win both the gold medal and the grand prize at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition. Now, with an international performing career on some of the world’s greatest stages, Kantorow has recorded multiple award-winning albums with BIS Records in an exclusive deal.

13. Martin James Bartlett, 25 – British pianist

    Alumnus of the Purcell School and the Royal College of Music, Martin James Bartlett has performed with many of the UK’s leading orchestras as well as further afield, with the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, while still studying for his undergraduate degree, Bartlett reached the quarter finals of the distinguished Van Cliburn competition in Texas.

14. Laura van der Heijden, 25 – British cellist

    With an award-winning debut album 1948 released in 2018, Laura van der Heijden has performed with leading orchestras across various continents, from the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra to the New Zealand Symphony. In late 2021, it was announced that van der Heijden had signed to Chandos Records, with her first album on the label, Pohádka, following in February 2022.

15. Jordan Bak, 27 – Jamaican-American violist

    With a master’s degree from The Juilliard School in New York, Jordan Bak is only the third violist to earn the Artist Diploma from the prestigious music school. In the last season, Bak has made recital debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Merkin Concert Hall, and Baltimore’s Shriver Hall Concert Series, having previously performed at the Verbier Festival and the Helsinki Musiikkitalo.

    

    Jordan Bak, violist. Picture: Dario Acosta

16. Chelsea Guo, 21 – American pianist and soprano

    Chelsea Guo made her piano debut with the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra at the age of nine, going on to become a Young Scholar at the Lang Lang Foundation and a recipient of the Chopin Foundation scholarship. She studies both voice and piano at Juilliard, and has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, as well as appearing in venues across North America, Europe and Asia. Her debut album was released in 2021, where Guo champions Chopin’s solo piano works and accompanies herself in songs by Chopin and Rossini.

17. Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, 26 – French violinist

    Born in France, Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux recently completed a master’s degree at the Royal College of Music, where she studied with Alina Ibragimova. She has recently appeared at Wigmore Hall and at the Gstaad Festival in the Swiss Alps where she performed in a quintet with star performers Alina Ibragimova, Lawrence Power, Sol Gabetta and Bertrand Chamayou. In May this year, Saluste-Bridoux released her debut album Ostinata.

18. Helen Charlston, 29 – British mezzo soprano

    In 201, Helen Charlston won first prize at the Handel Singing Competition, following up her success by winning the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards. Charlston has recently debuted with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia, as well as a global tour of Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony. During 2020, Charlston presented The Isolation Songbook in collaboration with Michael Craddock and Alexander Soares.

19. Armand Djikoloum, 24 – French oboist

    A prize winner at the 2021 Young Classical Artists Trust International Auditions, Armand Djikoloum is currently studying at the Hochschule for Music in Saar for a master’s degree. Djikoloum was appointed principal oboist of the Hannover State Opera aged just 22, and now regularly appears as guest principal with leading orchestras in Dresden, Frankfurt and Oslo. His UK appearances include Wigmore Hall and Cheltenham Music Festival, as well as with Chineke! Orchestra at the reopening of Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre.

    

    Armand Djikoloum, oboist. Picture: Kaupo Kikkas

20. Giuseppe Gibboni, 21 – Italian violinist

    Born to a family of musicians, Giuseppe Gibboni learned to play violin from his father, before attending music college in Salerno. He was admitted to the Stauffer Academy aged 14, and released his debut CD on Warner Classics the following year. In October 2021, Gibboni won first prize at the Paganini Violin Competition, also taking home the prizes for audience choice and best interpretations.

21. Ben Goldscheider, 24 – British horn player

    Born in London, Ben Goldscheider studied at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, graduating in 2020. His performing career began several years earlier, with performances alongside the Mozarteum, Aurora, Royal Philharmonic and English Chamber orchestras, as well as the Britten Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Goldscheider has worked with Nicholas Collon, Mark Wigglesworth, and Sir Mark Elder as well as collaborations with Daniel Barenboim, Martha Argerich, Sunwook Kim and more.

22. Anastasia Kobekina, 27 – Russian cellist

    Aged 12, Anastasia Kobekina was accepted into the Moscow Conservatory, before studying in Berlin from 2016 and later Paris. Currently studying in Frankfurt, Kobekina won third prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019 and recently performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko as well as making her recital debuts at the Verbier and Gstaad Menuhin festivals.

23. Jonathan Leibovitz, 25 – Israeli clarinettist

    Jonathan Leibovitz made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra aged 18, joining the orchestra as a member in 2019/20. He has also appeared as a guest with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Chamber orchestras, having won awards at at the Aviv, Israeli Wind and Carl Nielsen competitions. Leibovitz has appeared as a soloist with various orchestras and given recitals across Israel and Europe, and is founder of the Avir Wind Quintet.

24. Gabriel Martins, 24 – Brazilian-American cellist

    Medal winner at various prestigious competitions including the David Popper Cello Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Gabriel Martins has performed internationally at Wigmore and Carnegie halls, and with various US orchestras. Martins is alumnus of the Thornton School of Music and New England Conservatory.

25. Iyad Sughayer, 28 – Jordanian-Palestinian pianist

    Alumnus of the Royal Northern College of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Iyad Sughayer released his debut album Khachaturian Piano Works in November 2019, followed by a further recording of Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto and Masquerade in 2021/22. Sughayer has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras internationally, with recitals at Dubai Opera House, Steinway Hall in New York, and other venues across the UK, Europe and the US.

26. Yue Yu, 24 – Chinese violist

    Yue Yu began learning to play the viola at 12, having started violin lessons from six, and moved to the UK in 2015 to study at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Currently continuing her studies in Austria, Yu recorded her debut solo album with Naxos in September 2019, due for release later this year. Yu performs internationally at venues across the UK as well as in Austria, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and China.

    

    Yue Yu. Picture: Yue Yu

27. Yoav Levanon, 18 – Israeli-French pianist

    Beginning piano lessons at the age of three, Yoav Levanon made his performance debut aged four and made history in 2019 as the youngest pianist to perform at the Verbier Festival, attracting the largest online audience of the festival that year. In 2021, Levanon filmed a project with renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, and signed with Warner Classics in an exclusive contract.

28. Segun Akinola, 29 – British composer

    Segun Akinola began playing piano and drums at the age of five, going on to study composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. A musical storyteller, his composer credits for the screen include Black and British, a documentary on 9/11, and most notably Doctor Who.

29. Yunchan Lim, 18 – South Korean pianist

    Yunchan Lim found widespread renown in June 2022 when he became the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Prior to his success in Texas, Lim had won prizes at the Cleveland International, Cooper International and Korea’s IsangYun International competitions, performing with various orchestras in South Korea.

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30. Dmytro Choni, 28 – Ukrainian pianist

    In 2018, Ukrainian pianist Dmytro Choni won both first prize and gold medal at the Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, and earned laureate at the Leeds in 2021, as well as Busoni and Vladimir Horowitz in 2017. Choni’s debut album was released in 2020 on the Naxos label, and he regularly performs as soloist with orchestras such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, and Ukraine National Symphony, among others.

Forgotten records: How Beethoven Lost a Symphony

Witt’s Jéna Symphony

by Maureen Buja 

  

Friedrich Witt

In 1909, in the papers of the Academic Concert of the University of Jena, the music director found complete parts for a Symphony in C. Written on the 2nd violin part was ‘par Louis van Beethoven’ and, on the cello part, ‘Symphonie von Beethoven.’ This followed what Beethoven himself had written – that he had once attempted a Symphony in C major modelled on Haydn’s Symphony No. 97 before he wrote what we now know as his Symphony No. 1. This work fit that description perfectly.

The work was published under Beethoven’s name by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1911. It wasn’t until the discovery of another copy of the work by the scholar H.C. Robbins Landon that the situation became clear. The work that Robbins Landon discovered in Göttweig Abey was clearly signed by Friedrich Witt and he used that to convince the world that Witt was the composer, and not Beethoven. A second copy of the work found at Rudolstadt, also signed Witt, helped confirm the identification.

Walter Goehr (photo by Julia Crockatt)

Friedrich Witt (1770-1836) was a composer who was born the same year as Beethoven and had his own career as a composer and a cellist. From 1789 to about 1796 he was in the orchestra of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein. While Witt was at the court, Haydn sent copies of his Symphonies Nos. 93, 96, 97, and 98 to Wallerstein, thus giving Witt material for the Jena Symphony. After he wrote his oratorio Der leidende Heiland, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg appointed him as Kapellmeister in 1802. From 1814, when the court chapel was dissolved, to 1836 he was Kapellmeister at the Würzburg theatre and wrote operas for them, of which few survive.

The Jena Symphony probably dates from sometime between 1792-93 when Haydn’s symphonies arrived at Wallerstein and 1796.

When you listen to the work with Beethoven’s name attached, you immediately hear in the opening the characteristic rhythmic emphasis that Beethoven had in so many of his works. However, as the work continues, we aren’t so convinced. The work has been described as ‘a splendid example of symphonic writing from a time when this form was achieving both prestige and popularity with a growing music-loving public.’ We really have a work that reflects the state of the symphony after the death of Haydn and before Beethoven’s innovations in his Eroica symphony.

Friedrich Witt: Symphony in C major, “Jéna” – I. Adagio – Allegro Vivace

This recording was made in 1952 with The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra led by Walter Goehr. Walter Goehr (1903-1960) studied with Arnold Schoenberg in Berlin and became a conductor before being forced to leave Germany in 1937, becoming music director for the Gramophone Company (later EMI). He was a busy conductor for EMI and, after the war, for other European recording companies. He also taught conducting, was a music arranger, conducted for the BBC, and was a composer in his own right, including writing film scores.

Eric Whitacre: His Music and His Life

 

Eric Whitacre (1970-present)

Biography

Eric Whitacre (1970-present), accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer is one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation.

Life and Music

His published works – of which Sleep, Cloudburst, Lux Aurumque and Water Night are amongst the most popular choral works composed this decade - have sold over a million copies worldwide. Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, Eric’s cutting edge musical, has won the ASCAP Harold Arlen award, the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award and 10 Ovation Award nominations.

His Virtual Choir projects have given him a worldwide following on YouTube, marking a new digital age for classical music.

“Whitacre is that rare thing, a modern composer who is both popular and original" (The Telegraph).

Eric Whitacre conducts Eric Whitacre, with the cream of young British Singers – Laudibus – and his own professional choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, features Whitacre’s enchanting choral works including Lux Aurumque (Virtual Choir), Sleep, Seal Lullaby, Water Night and Five Hebrew Love Songs.

The Essentials of Jean Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau - his music and his life

By Alan S. Curtis 

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Jean-Philippe Rameau

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Baptized:

 

September 25, 1683

Died:

 

September 12, 1764 Paris France

Notable Works:

 

“Castor et Pollux” “Hippolyte et Aricie” “Les Indes galantes” “Les Sauvages” “Premier livre de pièces de clavecin” “Pygmalion” “Traité de l’harmonie”

Movement / Style:

 

Baroque music

Subjects Of Study:

 

harmony

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Summary

Read a brief summary of this topic

Jean-Philippe Rameau, (baptized September 25, 1683, Dijon, France—died September 12, 1764, Paris), French composer of the late Baroque period, best known today for his harpsichord music, operas, and works in other theatrical genres but in his lifetime also famous as a music theorist.

Rameau’s father, Jean, played the organ for 42 years in various churches in Dijon and hoped one day to see his son on a lawyer’s, rather than an organist’s, bench. These hopes were dashed by the boy’s deplorable performance in school. At the age of 17 he is said to have fallen in love with a young widow who laughed at the errors of grammar and spelling in his letters to her. He tried to refine his language, but, to judge by the prolixity of his later theoretical writings, his efforts resulted in no permanent improvement. At the age of 18, after deciding to pursue a musical career, he traveled to Italy but seems to have gotten no farther than Milan. The following year, he received the first of a series of appointments as organist in various cities of central France: Avignon, Clermont, Dijon, Lyon. There was a brief interlude in the capital, but apparently Paris did not take an immediate fancy to the provincial organist, in spite of his having published there a fine suite of harpsichord pieces in A minor, Premier livre de pièces de clavecin (1706). These works show the beneficial influence of Louis Marchand, a famous organist-harpsichordist of the day whose playing Rameau greatly admired.

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Back in Clermont by 1715, Rameau rashly signed a contract to be cathedral organist for 29 years. He then settled down to investigate, in an exhaustive and highly original manner, the foundations of musical harmony. He attacked traditional theory on the ground that “The Ancients,” who to Rameau included such relatively recent writers as the 16th-century Italian Gioseffo Zarlino, “…based the rules of harmony on melody, instead of beginning with harmony, which comes first.” Intuitively basing his studies on the natural overtone series, he arrived at a system of harmony that is the basis of most 20th-century harmony textbooks. Finally published in Paris in 1722, his impressive Traité de l’harmonie (Treatise on Harmony) brought him fame at last and a yearning to return to the capital. 

Authorities in Clermont were loath to let him go, and the story of his release reveals, as do his own writings and other evidence, something of his thorny personality, his persistence, and his single-mindedness. At an evening service he showed his displeasure with the church authorities by pulling out all the most unpleasing stops and by adding the most rending discords so that “connoisseurs confessed only Rameau could play so unpleasingly.” But, after his release from the contract, he played with “so much delicacy, brilliance, force and harmony, that he aroused in the souls of the congregation all the sentiments he wished, thereby sharpening the regret with which all felt the loss they were about to sustain.” 

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Upon his return to Paris, where he was to remain for the rest of his life, Rameau began a new and active life. A second volume of harpsichord pieces, Pièces de clavecin avec une méthode sur la mécanique des doigts (1724; “Harpsichord Pieces, with a Method for Fingering”), met with considerably more success than the first, and he became a fashionable teacher of the instrument. A commission to write incidental music for the Fair theatres planted the seeds of his development as a dramatic composer, and the display of two Louisiana Indians at one of these theatres in 1725 inspired the composition of one of his best and most celebrated pieces, Les Sauvages, later used in his opéra ballet Les Indes galantes (first performed 1735). The following year, at the age of 42, he married a 19-year-old singer, who was to appear in several of his operas and who was to bear him four children. 

His most influential contact at this time was Le Riche de la Pouplinière, one of the wealthiest men in France and one of the greatest musical patrons of all time. Rameau was put in charge of La Pouplinière’s excellent private orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. He also taught the financier’s brilliant and musical wife. The composer’s family eventually moved into La Pouplinière’s town mansion and spent summers at their château in Passy. This idyllic relationship between patron and composer gradually came to an end after La Pouplinière separated from his wife, and Rameau was replaced by the younger, avant-garde composer Karl Stamitz. Meanwhile, however, admittance to La Pouplinière’s circle had brought Rameau into contact with various literary lights. Abbé Pellegrin, whose biblical opera Jephté had been successfully set to music by Rameau’s rival Michel de Montéclair in 1732, was to become Rameau’s librettist for his first and in many ways finest opera, Hippolyte et Aricie. It was first performed in the spring of 1733, at La Pouplinière’s house, then, in the autumn, at the Opéra, and in 1734 it was performed at court. André Campra, perhaps the most celebrated French composer of the time, remarked to the Prince de Conti: “My Lord, there is enough music in this opera to make ten of them; this man will eclipse us all.” 

To some ears there was, indeed, too much music. Those who had grown up with the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully were baffled by the complexity of Rameau’s orchestration, the intensity of his accompanied recitatives (speechlike sections), and the rich and often dissonant diversity of his harmonies. Rameau himself, however, professed his admiration for his predecessor in the preface to Les Indes galantes, in which he praised the “beautiful declamation and handsome turns of phrase in the recitative of the great Lully,” and stated that he had sought to imitate it, though not as a “servile copyist.” Indeed, almost everything in Rameau’s operas has, at least technically, a precedent in Lully. Yet the content of his works, the rich dramatic contrasts, the brilliant orchestral sections, and, above all, the permeating sensuous melancholy and languorous pastoral sighings, put him in a different world: in short, the Rococo world of Louis XV. 

Among those at the first performance of Hippolyte was the great Voltaire, who quipped that Rameau “is a man who has the misfortune to know more music than Lully.” But he soon came around to Rameau’s side and wrote for him a fine libretto, Samson, which was banned ostensibly for religious reasons but really because of a cabal against Voltaire; the music was lost. Their later collaboration on two frothy court entertainments is preserved, however: La Princesse de Navarre and Le Temple de la Gloire (both 1745). The former was condensed and revised as Les Fêtes de Ramire (1745) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Rousseau, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, and other writers associated with Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie began as ardent Rameau enthusiasts, but, by the mid-1750s, as they warmed more and more to Italian music, they gradually turned against him. Rameau appreciated the new Italian music as much as anyone, but the works he composed in this style, such as the overtures to Les Fêtes de Polymnie (1745) and to his final work, Abaris ou les Boréades (1764), do not bear the mark of individuality. 

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The zenith of Rameau’s career may be said to have encompassed the brief span from 1748, when he tossed off the masterpiece Pygmalion in eight days and had six other operas on the boards, through 1754, when he wrote La Naissance d’Osiris (“The Birth of Osiris”) for the birth of the future Louis XVI. Thereafter, his fame diminished, as the prevailing musical style became what is now generally called “Classical.” The public preferred catchy tunes with simple harmonies to Rameau’s profound emotion and rich, late-Baroque harmony.

10 of Claude Debussy’s greatest pieces of music

Debussy’s greatest masterpieces. Picture: Alamy

By Siena Linton, ClassicFM

 

From lazy woodland creatures on a hot summer’s day to the plains of southern Spain, Claude Debussy is the unparalleled master of evocative musical imagery.

Forever entwined in the imaginations of his admirers with lethargic fauns, and idyllic woodlands thick with summer haze, Claude Debussy was classical music’s answer to the impressionist art movement which took Paris by storm in the mid to late 19th century.

As Monet, Cézanne and Renoir were masters of the visual arts, so Debussy was a master at crafting intricate and mesmerising soundscapes, transporting his audiences to dream-like worlds with his musical reveries.

1. Petite Suite (1907)

   Originally written for piano with four hands, Debussy’s Petite Suite was orchestrated by his colleague Henri Büsser in 1907. Made up of four movements, the first evokes a picturesque seaside vista. Titled ‘En bateau’, or ‘Sailing’, it’s easy to imagine boats and dinghies bobbing over gently rocking waves, as a flute melody soars over sighing strings and harp glissandos.

   
   

2. Jeux (1913)

   Debussy’s Jeux is a one-of-a-kind piece of music. Premiered in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, just two weeks before Stravinsky’s riot-inducing Rite of Spring, it was described by the composer as a ‘danced poem’. The piece was written at the request of dynamic ballet duo Sergei Diaghilev and legendary choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, to be performed by Diaghilev’s company, Ballets Russes. It follows a vague storyline of a boy, two girls, and a tennis ball, which goes ultimately unresolved – much like many of Debussy’s harmonies.

   
   

3. Ibéria (1912)

   The second movement of Images pour orchestre, ‘Ibéria’ consists of three movements itself, each depicting images of Spain: its streets and paths, the scents of night, and the ‘morning of a festive day’. It’s an adventurous musical wonderland of jingling percussion, clacking castanets and chiming church bells, evocative of the sunny Iberian peninsula.

4. La fille aux cheveux de lin (1910)

   Debussy wrote two books of solo piano preludes, the first in 1909-1910 and the second in 1912-1913. By far the best known, is La fille aux cheveux de lin, or ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’. With a performance marking meaning ‘very calm and sweetly expressive’, it’s a short and simple work that, over the course of just a few minutes, perfectly depicts the soft innocence that is often associated with golden hair in fine art.

5. Rêverie (1884)

   Debussy’s Rêverie is another one of those beautifully dream-like solo piano pieces that cements its composer as one of the 20th-century greats. With gently oscillating motifs, contrasting rhythms in the left and right hands, and plenty of rubato, the music creates a blissful sense of floating and weightlessness.

   
   

6. Pelléas et Mélisande (1902)

   Although he began to write several, Pelléas et Mélisande is the only opera that Debussy completed. As a young composer Debussy was in awe of Wagner’s operas, traveling to the Bayreuth Festival to see them. And yet, as he told a friend, he had to be careful not to allow the 19th-century opera titan’s works to influence him too much: he had seen fellow French composers attempt to imitate the style, and thought it “dreary”. And so Pelléas et Mélisande is the perfect melting pot of laissez-faire French impressionism and Wagnerian drama.

7. La mer (1905)

   La mer, which translates to ‘The Sea’, was first performed in Paris in late 1905. Inspired by artists’ depictions of the sea rather than the sea itself, one of the criticisms following an icy reception at the premiere was, “I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea”. Other critics wrote that it did not depict the sea, but rather “some agitated water in a saucer”. Nevertheless, on consecutive performances the piece was much more favourably received, and remains a favourite among the world’s top orchestras to this day.

8. Clair de lune (1905)

   Think of relaxing piano music, and Debussy’s gorgeous ‘Clair de lune’ probably comes to mind. It’s the third, and most famous, movement from Suite bergamasque, which Debussy began writing in 1890 and ultimately finished in 1905. So the story goes, Debussy didn’t originally want these early pieces made public, but eventually accepted a publisher’s offer – and thank goodness he did.

   
   

9. Deux Arabesques (1891)

   Debussy wrote his Deux Arabesques for solo piano while still in his 20s, between 1888 and 1891. Despite the composer’s young age, the whimsical and dream-like character his music would come to be known and loved for can already be heard, carving the way for French Impressionism in music.

10. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894)

    Beginning with one of the most iconic orchestral flute solos ever written, Debussy wrote Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun’) in 1894. His inspiration was a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, in which a faun awakes from his afternoon slumber and recounts a series of rendezvous with forest nymphs. Debussy’s meandering score and rich orchestration captivates his audience and brings them to the heart of the forest on a balmy summer’s day, to hear the tales of the faun’s afternoon amidst the heady pinewood scents, floating through the breeze.