French Keyboard Masterpieces

VAI 1043-2

Note: This album is out of stock in most stores. Most performances reissued on Ivan Moravec Plays French Music and Great Pianists: Ivan Moravec

In this page: Tracks | Reviews | Notes

Tracks

Disc 1

Franck: Prélude, choral et fugue

1 Prelude, Choral
2 Fugue

Ravel: Sonatine

3 Modéré
4 Mouvement de menuet
5 Animé

6 Debussy: Clair de lune (Suite Bergamasque)

Debussy: Children's Corner Suite

7 Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum
8 Jimbo's Lullaby
9 Serenade for the Doll
10 Snow is Dancing
11 The Little Sheperd
12 Golliwog's Cake-walk

Disc 2

Debussy: Preludes

1 Feux d'artifice
2 La Cathédrale engloutie
3 Les Collines d'Anacapri
4 Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir
5 La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

6 Debussy: Jardins sous la pluie (Estampes)

Debussy: Preludes

7 La puerta del vino
8 Ondine
9 Feuilles mortes

Debussy: Pour le piano

10 Prelude
11 Sarabande
12 Toccata

Production

Format: CD-ADD

Original recording sessions:

Disc 1 tracks 1-2: 1962 New York
Disc 1 tracks 3-5, Disc 2 tracks 6-12: 1969 Vienna
Disc 1 tracks 6-12, Disc 2 tracks 1-5: 1967 New York

Reviews

American Record Guide

... some of the most beautiful piano playing you will ever hear.

Fanfare

Moravec's awesome control and imagination make these discs a must for pianophiles.

Amazon.com

Here are two CDs of Ivan Moravec's famous Connoisseur Society recordings from the 1960s. Most of the music is Debussy, a composer whose music glows through the pianist's tonal colorations and imagination. You may never hear Clair de Lune played with more beautiful sound and less affected delivery. Moravec's Ravel doesn't sound just like Debussy, as it shouldn't; the tone is just as beautiful but the rhythms are outlined more strongly. The Franck work, his most popular for solo piano, comes off here as sheer magic.

--Leslie Gerber