Debussy: Images / Estampes / Masques / L'Isle joyeuse

It’s no surprise that the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa features on BIS’s “Top 30” edition. She has been one of Robert von Bahr’s most fruitful signings, both for the quality of her playing and for the breadth of her repertoire. The first volume of her Debussy intégrale is by any standards distinguished pianism. Her Images challenges Gieseking’s classic 1953 recording, while Ogawa’s subtle colouring of the many piano dynamics of Pagodes (from Estampes) marks her out as a rather special Debussy pianist. A particular feature of these performances is her close observance of Debussy’s many expression marks; you’d be surprised how many pianists play fast and loose with Debussy’s explicit instructions. Excellent sound.

About the programme

This disc gathers four of Debussy’s most important early-to-middle-period piano works. The first set of Images (1905), Reflets dans l’eau, Hommage à Rameau and Mouvement, marked Debussy’s move toward the harmonically freer, more atmospheric writing that would define his mature style. Estampes (1903), meaning “prints” or “engravings,” is an early example of Debussy evoking distant places and cultures through sound: its three movements conjure a Javanese gamelan (Pagodes), Spain (La soirée dans Grenade) and a French garden in the rain. Masques and L’Isle joyeuse, both completed around 1904, share a restless, virtuosic energy quite different from the more static, coloristic writing elsewhere on the disc, L’Isle joyeuse in particular is one of Debussy’s most technically demanding and exuberant solo piano works.

About the performer

Noriko Ogawa is a Japanese pianist who built a long association with the Swedish label BIS, recording extensively across the core piano repertoire alongside her Debussy series. She studied in Japan and London, won prizes on the international competition circuit early in her career, and has performed with major orchestras internationally. Her recordings for BIS, founded and run by Robert von Bahr, span a notably wide range of composers and repertoire, of which this Debussy cycle represents one strand.

Born in Kawasaki in 1962, Ogawa trained at the Tokyo College of Music and then at the Juilliard School in New York before her third-place finish at the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition launched her international career. She has recorded exclusively for BIS since 1997, and her ongoing complete survey of Debussy’s solo piano works has won repeated Gramophone Editor’s Choice recognition across its successive volumes. Alongside her performing career she holds professorships at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Tokyo College of Music.