Alexei Lubimov CLAUDE DEBUSSY Préludes

“I wanted to hear Debussy in a different timbral guise, cloaked in the early 20th century colours that I would find on unique, specially selected instruments… In my search for an inspiring special sound I stumbled upon two excellent pianos that truly seduced me and breathed fresh life into the music… The music revealed itself to me from unknown angles, and like Ulysses bewitched by the Sirens, I let my pianos sing with their own voices and guide me into uncharted realms.” – Alexei Lubimov

A fortuitous encounter with an old Steinway in the Polish Embassy in Brussels – said to be the instrument Paderewski played in his recitals – stimulated Alexei Lubimov to think in new ways about these Debussy pieces he had played, often, over the last 40 years. Alexei Lubimov and fellow Russian pianist Alexei Zuev (a student of Lubimov’s since 2000) play “period instruments” here, but as Jürg Stenzl emphasizes in the liner notes, “they are concerned not with the mystique of ‘authentic original instruments’, but with the incomparably richer timbral vocabulary that Debussy posited for his music and displayed to supreme effect in his own playing. Moreover, the piano versions of two early works, ‘Prélude to the Afternoon of a Faun’ and ‘Trois Nocturnes’, which fully capture the text of the orchestral scores in their piano writing (unlike conventional ‘piano reductions’), bring out the structural, compositional and harmonic aspects with special clarity.” (ECM Records)