A magnificent journey through Debussy

Classical Jean-efflam Bavouzet plays Debussy Milton Court ★★★★★

Of the Debussy commemorations marking the centenary of his death, none has seemed more fitting than this: Jean-efflam Bavouzet’s marathon run through his piano music at Milton Court on Sunday, exactly 100

years to the day since the composer died. Though not aiming to be a complete survey – Bavouzet has recorded the full Debussy output anyway – this triple-decker programme provided a magnificent overview of the long musical journey Debussy made in a relatively short number of years before cancer killed him, aged 55.

Several of the early pieces from around 1890, which is where Bavouzet began his exploration, bear testimony to the influence of Russian music some two decades before the Ballets Russes revolutionised the Paris ballet scene. The Ballade Slave may be a conventional work, but Bavouzet found plenty to fascinate in its rippling textures – clear up to a point, but retaining a sense of mystery. The Tarantelle Styrienne had glittering power. Despite a very physical connection to the keyboard, Bavouzet’s playing was consistently poised; even as Debussy’s style changed, he showed how intensity and precision are the constant keys to its mastery.

Bavouzet projected the Arabesque No. 1 on gentle waves of sound, and supplied nonchalant virtuosity in the third of the Images oubliées. In his lively and illuminating chat from the stage, Bavouzet confessed to often finding Debussy hard to pin down, and even the climaxes difficult to identify – though that was not a problem in the extrovert brilliance of L’isle joyeuse.

Within a few years of all this, Debussy was writing modern music while never being a self-conscious modernist. Observing that “too much beauty might kill beauty”, Bavouzet filleted the first book of the Préludes as well as the Etudes, and played only the first series of Images, but gave us the complete second book of Préludes in order to show Debussy at his most concentrated. From the floating haze of Brouillards and the muscular Spanish flavour of La puerta del vino, he created an atmosphere of enchantment and quirkiness before celebrating the end of the journey with a Feux d’artifice full of colour and fire.