DEBUSSY, Claude
Images for solo piano (II)
2. Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût
Fou Ts’ong, guest professor
Michele Gamba, student
The student plays the complete piece, and then the masterclass begins with Professor T’song’s reflections on how the piece sounded, comparing it to how he plays it himself (interestingly, the student has played in a more “oriental” way than him, in the conventional sense, more “zen”). They continue to reflect on the immateriality of music. Afterwards, the professor comments that the work is dedicated to Louis Laloy, the greatest sinologist (expert in Chinese culture) who “advised” Debussy’s music in this sense.
They review the piece, taking into account fundamentally the intensity, freedom or metric rigor, dynamics, phrasing and expressiveness, always thinking about recreating the most appropriate sonority and that feeling of when you are in an exterior landscape and something mysterious arrives and disappears.
Professor and student also talk about the limitations of the piano when expressing (for example, the vibrato), but also its power to transmit the abstract of music. Fou T’song compares Debussy’s aesthetics with other composers such as Ravel.
The professor continues pointing out agogic and dynamic issues related to relaxation and emotion. Rigor in reading the score in all the details is also very important for T’song in order to adequately characterize all the musical ideas.
Language: English
