Debussy Images

Back in 2020, I reviewed Saskia Giorgini’s live recording with Ian Bostridge of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. Having enjoyed the collaborative effort and interpretative elements of the performance, I looked forward to hearing how they would translate in a solo capacity. This new album features a curation of Debussy’s finest (and most well-known) piano works.

Pentatone’s sound engineers excel in bringing out the intricacies of the Bösendorfer piano Giorgini plays, as well as the instrument’s lovely temperament. In her own foreword,

An enjoyable listen all around.

Saskia Giorgini, of Dutch and Italian heritage, has just released her first album of Debussy which, in terms of secure yet unobtrusive technique and richly realized imagination, stands proudly beside her magnificent Liszt recordings.

To hear Giorgini play the two books of Images is to hear distilled, in purely musical terms, the palette and brushwork of Monet and Renoir. From ‘Hommage à Rameau’, imbued with near-tragic longing, to the exquisite rhythmic grasp and polyphonic resourcefulness of ‘Mouvement’, you may find yourself, as I did, struggling to imagine when you might have heard it better.

The intelligence and sensual pacing of L’isle joyeuse is better experienced than described. In all these works, Giorgini’s ability to choose the inevitably apt tempo is uncanny. That attribute of any pianist worthy of the name, namely a plenitude of calculable levels of sound at the quiet end of the dynamic spectrum, finds in her a happy home. From a pianist who is not yet 40, one can only imagine the musical joys that lie ahead.