Debussy, Préludes I & Crumb, Makrokosmos I

Featuring

Martin Klett
Claude Debussy
George Crumb

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Performer Biography

Pianist Martin Klett won both the Johannes Brahms International Competition as a soloist and the German Music Competition as a duo partner in 2008.

Compositional Technique

George Crumb's scores are visually striking, with some pages in Makrokosmos notated in the form of a spiral or a cross, reflecting an aesthetic attitude described as Mannerism.

Composer Biography

The fifth piece in George Crumb's Makrokosmos, 'The Phantom Gondolier,' is a self-portrait, as it is dedicated to the zodiac sign Scorpio, which begins on Crumb's birthday, October 24, 1929.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Claude Debussy, often mislabeled an Impressionist, considered himself an adherent of Symbolism, as evidenced by his choice of texts for songs and his opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Debussy conceived music not as a rigorous construction but as an organic process, giving the impression that it emerges and evolves in the moment, often using floral, ornamental gestures.

Compositional Technique

In Debussy's Préludes, the poetic descriptions or subjects appear in brackets at the end of each piece, functioning more as subtitles than titles, a practice that harks back to Bach and Chopin.

Compositional Technique

George Crumb's Makrokosmos, a four-volume work, employs unusual performance techniques such as tapping and knocking on the piano frame or scraping the strings.