Debussy: Children's Corner; Images, Book 1 and Book 2

COMPOSERS: Debussy
LABELS: Regis
WORKS: Children’s Corner; Images, Book 1 and Book 2
PERFORMER: Martino Tirimo (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: RRC 1063 Reissue (1991)

A very welcome reissue of a very superior disc. Tirimo is a born tone-painter and conveys us at once into Debussy’s unique sound-world. Or should that be plural? Because Debussy created and inhabited a variety of sound-worlds – a fact of which Tirimo is obviously well aware. This isn’t just a bath of lavishly pedalled overtones, though Tirimo’s feet are at all times a match for his wonderfully responsive fingers, but a discerning panorama which variously brings to mind the translucent clarity of Mozart, the harmonic blendings of Beethoven and, perhaps most of all, the comprehensive pianism of Chopin. Even more impressive than the sound, however, are an exemplary rhythmic vocabulary, which never allows metre to get in the way, and a textural palette of kaleidoscopic variety. This disc will not replace the super-aristocratic and slightly more ‘classical’ Casadesus on my shelf but can stand proudly next to it. Jeremy Siepmann