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Claude Debussy Clair de Lune "Moonlight"* Suite bergamasque, for piano, L.75
Suite/Partita for Keyboard
1 No. 1, "Prelude"
2 No. 2, "Menuet"
3 No. 3, "Clair de lune"*
4 No. 4, "Passepied"
Leonard Pennario,piano.
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Related information:
Composition Description by Blair Johnston
It is difficult to establish an appropriate chronological place for Claude Debussy's Suite bergamasque within his output. He originally composed the piece in 1890, but it was not published until 1905, and the extent to which he revised it during the interval is unclear. Certainly the published work is a great stylistic advance over the few short piano works which preceded it during the late 1880s and early 1890s, but whether that advance is due to an early maturity or to much later alteration will perhaps always elude historians.
The Suite, Debussy's tribute to the French Baroque clavecinistes (harpsichordists), comprises four individual movements: Prélude, Menuet, Clair de lune, and Passepied. It is interesting to note that Debussy originally titled the third and fourth pieces "Promenade sentimentale" and "Pavane," respectively, and changed their titles only shortly before publishing the Suite in 1905. This has caused many to question the purported connection between the much-celebrated Clair de lune and Paul Verlaine's poem of the same name. However, Debussy's connection with Verlaine's poetry is far reaching enough for the association to be meaningful. He had already set the poem "Clair de lune," as well as several others, for voice and piano on two separate occasions by 1891, and the word bergamasque is itself contained within that particular text.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=42:45739~T1
His 1984-85 season included a nationwide television appearance on the PBS "Gala of Stars" hosted by Beverly Sills, where the pianist performed Gershwin's I Got Rhythm Variations with Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine conducting the American Symphony Orchestra. He also made highly successful tours of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in May, which resulted in immediate invitations for re-engagements. In the spring of 1984 he made his first tour of the Far East, appearing in recital and with orchestra in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Manila and is scheduled to return to the Far East in the near future. In other parts of the world the list continues to be as impressive: Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Halle Orchestra, Hague Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Tonhalle Orchestra and Frankfurt Symphony, among others.
Concerts with the greatest orchestras have made Pennario the choice of world-famous conductors. Among the nearly one hundred eminent artists with whom he has collaborated, a reasonable list must included Eugene Ormandy, Sir Georg Solti, Zubin Mehta, André Previn, Seija Ozawa, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, Rafael Kubelik, Leopold Stokowski, Thomas Schippers, Arthur Fiedler, André Kostelanetz, Sir John Barbirolli, Edward Van Beinum, Sir Adrian Boult, Vladimir Golschmann, Josef Krips, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Artur Rodzinski, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Robert Shaw, Gerard Schwarz and Alfred Wallenstein.
Of the artist's concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic and Rafael Kubelik, Die Welt of Berlin cited his "superb technique and keyboard touch of exceptional sensitivity." Le Figaro of Paris calls Pennario "a phenomenon of the piano." In London, Andrew Porter told his readers in The New Statesman and The Nation, "Nobody today plays the piano better than Pennario."
In Carnegie Hall and in Los Angeles, Pennario collaborated in history-making concerts with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky. Thousands of music lovers attended, hearing these three great artists in brilliant performances of trios by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák, Arensky, Turina and Mendelssohn.
http://www.pennario.org/Pages/Leonard-Pennario-Biography.html
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