Lucy Scott - Great Composers - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Antoni / Ciccolini - Pietro Degli Antoni 12 Sonatas for Violin & Basso [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/26/2016

Claude Debussy is regarded by many as the quintessential French composer, with music that invited both warm applause and frosty criticism in his day. While our ears no longer hear him as controversial, his works heralded the dawn of an artistic period founded on innovation and experiment, and a desire to break with the past in search of new expressive means. With never a dull moment, Debussy went from being a musical misfit at the Paris Conservatoire to bohemian life amongst the Symbolist poets with involvement in some scandalous love affairs. The transformative effect of pieces such as the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune eventually saw him awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneurin 1903. The narrative is illustrated with musical excerpts from Children's Corner, String Quartet in G minor, Images, Nocturnes and Pelléas et Mélisande, among many others.

Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist - blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin's life and times separates myth and reality. Illustrated with numerous musical examples, the narrative takes us from his youthful beginnings as 'a second Mozart' to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.