In my nonage my conquest of Debussy was one of my headier musical triumphs. My earliest musical experience was strictly diatonic; by the time I reached eighteen my ear had developed about as far as middle-period Verdi. Since ontogeny, in its mysterious way, duplicates phylogeny, it was fated that I had to overcome Wagner before moving into my own century and, pursuant to some initial frustrations, I soon became an insatiable Wagner addict. Mind you, I had no consciousness that I was pursuing any rational course of self-education, but that's where instinct was leading me, and unerringly it led me to Debussy. Specifically it led me to "Iberia," thanks to American Decca records. Decca, having made a pile on Bing Crosby, decided in the late 1930s to do its bit for culture by issuing a sizable "classical" catalog, drawn from the archives of European Odeon, Parlophone, and Decca. Records, with red labels and horrid surfaces, Went at fifty and seventy-five cents each (as against $1.50 and $2.00 for Victors and Columbias), thus making it possible for me, on my $15.00 salary. to buy a record or two a week. And so I acquired "Iberia" played by the Concerts Colonne Orchestra under the baton of Gabriel Pierne (no slouch he!), of whom I had never heard. Driving everyone in my home mad, I played the thing over and over until at last the magic took effect.
My next Debussy discovery was Bk. I of the piano Preludes. Decca had no recording of the preludes, and I could only dream of owning Walter Gieseking's Columbia album (M352). But those were the golden days when you could go to your friendly record dealer, ask for what you wanted, and retire with it into a listening booth until thrown out. I not only retired into the booth; I retired into the Preludes. I was then of a singularly perfervid imagination, and I turned in the air with the sounds and perfumes, desolated the hedge-rows with the wind from the west, and lay deep asleep under the waters with the lost cathedral of Ys.
Gieseking's album of Book II came later on (M644) and so I acquired, in those days, only a nodding acquaintance with it. Though I have since come to know the work well, it still has for me the fascination of an unexplored country. Perhaps the impression is heightened by the evocative references to fog, and dead leaves, and briars, and moonlight. But I recall too being surprised and overjoyed at meeting my old friend S. Pickwick, Esq., P.P.M.P.C. in the midst of this blurry and chaotic landscape. Not that Debussy's portrait of him accorded with mine, but it was nice to find that the composer had a sense of humor.
Back in the olden days (as my freshmen adore to say), a prelude was a piece of music that introduced something--usually another piece of music. It was Chopin who attached the name to his short quasiimprovisatory compositions, to some of which romantic minds gave titles and programmes. Debussy, in paying homage to the great Pole, deliberately invited the listener's imaginative participation by providing his twenty-four with suggestive titles.
The present performance was recorded "live" on Washington's Birthday of this year at a Carnegie Recital Hall concert at the behest of MHS' Dr. Naida, whose unerring instinct for new talent goes back to the earliest days of Westminster Records. Jacob Krichaf is a young Canadian who has studied with Nadia Reisenberg, performed all over Europe and North America, and won a number of prestigious honors and awards.
