Georges Pludermacher - Debussy: Children's Corner (1998)

A pupil of Lucienne Descaves, Jacques Février and Geneviève Joy, Georges Pludermacher is a discreet pianist with a sharp musicality and a daring style. In 1994, he recorded a beautiful Debussy album for harmonia mundi with a particularly rare programme. There was the Children's Corner suite to which he brought a vision brimming with melancholy.


This original pairing features works from the beginning and the end of the composer's career and is available once again. It contains the Suite bergamasque which was composed around 1890 and revised by its author because, Debussy said, printing it in its original version "would be mad and useless". The proximity to Verlaine, especially in the famous Claire de lune, is easily perceptible in Pludermacher's diaphanous and delicate interpretation.

Originally conceived as a suite for orchestra (which they later became thanks to Ernest Ansermet's beautiful orchestration), the Six Épigraphes antiques of 1914 flirt with a tonal abstraction expressed with rare poetry by the French pianist. This endearing record closes with the Pour le piano suite, one of Debussy's earliest compositions. It shows a composer beginning to find his own particular harmony by way of the masters to whom he is unconsciously paying tribute. Let us highlight the beautiful quality of the sound material due to Georges Pludermacher's unique, fluid touch that the technicians were able to reproduce perfectly.