Estampes

Completed in 1903, Estampes (“Prints”, or “Etchings”) is the first of Debussy’s piano masterworks to explore worlds of colourful sensation and atmosphere associated with the term “impressionism”. The first two of the collection’s three pieces transport the listener to exotic lands of Debussy’s imagination. “Pagodes” (Pagodas) is a musical portrait of the Far East, signified by the pentatonic scale typical of Asian music; the idea may have come from Debussy’s encounter with an Indonesian gamelan ensemble of tuned gongs, which he heard at the Paris World Exhibition of 1889. “Soirée dans Grenade” (Evening in Grenada) deploys the habanera dance rhythm to conjure the sounds and moods of the Andalusian city in southern Spain, with fleeting but vivid suggestions of guitar playing, flamenco singing and the starlit sky overhead. Finally comes “Jardins sous la pluie” (Gardens in the Rain), a busy toccata depicting a sequence of rapidly passing showers, leading toward a closing keyboard flourish in which the sun brilliantly bursts through.