Debussy: Quelques aspects de "Nous n'irons plus au bois" -- one idea at a time

This piece is included in the suite 'Images oubliées' composed in 1894. This is the year Debussy composed Prélude à "L'Après-midi d'un faune" and yet he was not so keen to write piano music.

The work is based on an innocent child song well known among Europeans. It seems to me that the composer demonstrated his wit by this stimulating (and almost poisonous) paraphrase. This is like a prose in contrast to poetic 'Jardins sous la pluie', where the same tune is used as a motive.

Score Reading the was easy because of repeating set of notes, but playing is not so due to the impromptu nature. The composer was so good at piano that he did not think about avoiding risky moments for pianists. Many pianists, including me, cannot control everything in this piece and often have to do fireworks. Somehow I always feel at home doing this on Debussy pieces. Many subtle feelings and possibilities are cut off and I follow only one idea at a time.

I tried to play this as if it was a sketch of a symphonic piece with an image of clarinet or faggot taking part of the melody. Good pianists find other pleasant ways of playing it more lively and maybe percussively. Coda should be played better. Rich sounds are required. In my playing the music is rather "small".

My performance has other problems in clarifying the melody line and so on. Still, one might hear confidence and positive feelings in my music, which is rarely found in other performances from me.

piano: C6x, Yamaha

movie in youtube is in the status of "limited release".