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 - sound quality of recording very averageI have to say I was disappointed with this CD. You cannot fault the artist, but the fact that it was recorded in the 1950s is very obvious by the very average sound quality of the recording, this is especialy noticable when the artist plays louder sections in the pieces. Rating:  - The above should be 3 Stars,Yes, I have heard oh, 90% of all recordings of Debussy's solo piano music . As well, I have Debussy's recordings from 1913, one on Pierain and the other is on Dal Segno. The Dal Segno has a few extra pieces that are not on the Pierain release. Giesekings profound understanding of the nuances and details of these beautiful piano pieces is like few others I've heard. The only drawback is the recording quality, which is a problem. Even at low volume the distracting poor quality is a serious issue. EDIT: Upon further consideration, though Gieseking does some interesting things, overall I have to give my preference to Pascal ROGE on London. Also Jean Bernard Pommier does a fine performance as well. I prefer these 2 pianists more than the following: Michelangeli (a long time fav) , Zimerman, Thibaudet, Thoillier. I have the Monique Hass on order. I like Debussy with exquiste nuances. For that I go to Roge, Pommier. And few others. Look at all my reviews in Ravel for 2 other mentions. Tharaud and Bavouzet I give Gieseking a 3 Star. Pommier 5 Stars Roge 4/5 Stars Bavouzet 5 stars Tharaud 4/5 Rating: - Not all it's cracked up to beI've never quite figured out why Gieseking's Debussy (and Ravel, for that matter -- but particularly Debussy) is as celebrated as it is. His playing is not nearly as enjoyable or pleasing as Casadesus and many others (such as Guiomar Novaes). And, on this in particular, there are disgraceful flurries of wrong notes (such as in the prelude, "Ce qu'a vu le vent d'Ouest") that, rather than being an indication of emotional excitement, seem to me to indicate a shameful lack of concern for the music. Rating: - Debussy will never sound best!You must recognize after listening the incorporean , seductive , evocative , sugestive and landscape depicter style of Walter Gieseking ; that is hard to find out another player who has been so commited as Gieseking was. You easily may establish standards in other musical latitudes : Beethoven - Schnabel ; Schumann - Kempff ; Chopin - Francois ; Rachmaninvov - Kapell ; Bartok - Sandor . I mean these piano works are not only extraordinary performances , but also has become in must reference. Think in The two arabesques ; the Bergamasque suite or the great gate of wine for instance ; Gieseking seemed vanishing as pianist to become in a stalker who carries us to the deepest regions of Debussy's soul . You feel the pantheist mood in all the extension of the word. Don't risk your time in any other player . I've tried and there's no way to win with Gieseking ; he's the one and unique! The known pianist Jesus Maria San Roma had for Gieseking that kind surname : Walter He's a king . Rating:  - ALMOST The GreatestIn rating this collection a mere four stars, I do so not against all of the other Debussy piano offerings out there (alongside which it would rate a hard-and-fast five stars), but rather against Gieseking's own pre-war standard. Because, deservedly respected as these recordings are, in the words of Yoda to Obi-wan Kenobi, "there is another," and here it sits on this very website in an unassuming little two-disc set from the wonderful Video Arts International label. It is the dazzling, important compilation modestly titled WALTER GIESEKING PLAYS DEBUSSY, and reissues recordings made from 1927 to 1939 (the vast majority are from the late 1930s). In trying to avoid the overstatement which we all are tempted to attach to greatness, I will stop at saying that these are the recordings upon which Gieseking's fame and the public's worldwide love of Debussy's piano works were largely based during the early twentieth century. As for those who persist in finding Gieseking's interpretations "unromantic" or otherwise "Germanic" in their exposition, I would hasten to quash their criticism utterly on all grounds other than, of course, the final arbiter of personal taste. If certain listeners unfamiliar with the true Romantic Piano Tradition as exemplified on record by the likes of Hofmann, Schnabel, Paderewski, Godowsky, et al., and hence adopted by such devoted musicians as Gieseking, prefer their Debussy presented in formless, meter-less, pedal-heavy miasmatic tides of indistinct sounds, washing over them like a Turner seascape but leaving them knowing nothing about the pieces nor perceiving their true beauties as miniature art works, then by all means, latch on to some nameless modern practitioner painting his murky pictures on a five-dollar "Debussy For A Sunday Afternoon" compilation, and draw your bath. But at the least let it not be forgotten that, while Debussy undeniably influenced Ravel in the latter's orchestral works, the reverse is also true, and it was the neo-classicist Ravel from whom Debussy took his lead in forging his most worthwhile piano music. What follows is by a contemporary of Giesekings' named Abram Chasins, writing in his 1957 book SPEAKING OF PIANISTS, published just a few months after Gieseking's death: "Every now and then one attends a performance that casts a spell of enchantment. It does not happen often. But Walter Gieseking's all-Debussy program at Carnegie Hall in 1955 was such an occasion. From the first note of the Suite Bergamasque to the fourth encore, `General Lavine,' it was an evening of magic. Few of the many musicians present would have challenged the publisher's right to print on the music: `Private Property of Walter Gieseking. No Trespassing!' "He evoked excitement, transparency, and movement throughout. Occasionally he would choose to hold his audience hypnotically suspended through an ethereal pianissimo or a section of tremulous repose. With endless refinements of touch and pedaling, once phrase grew out of another. Climaxes developed with the inevitable force and upward sweep that stamp the musician and the architectural master. In each piece we perceived an artist living in the very sound he was creating. He painted, so to speak, with fingers dipped in the hues of Degas, Renoir, Manet, and Bonnard. The sum was a tableau of surpassing beauty, color, and poetry emerging from a Baldwin. "Sometime later I turned to the Columbia LP recordings of Gieseking's 1951 performances of Debussy's two books of preludes, Children's Corner, and Suite Bergamasque; the reissue of the artist's 1939 playing of Estampes and Images; and, finally, to Gieseking's Angel recordings of Ravel's piano works. These, too, confirmed the fact that Gieseking clearly ruled the domain of impressionism. "I found myself listening time and time again to one piece after another, enthralled and mystified. Mystified that the unearthly sounds could possibly come from a piano or from any determinable instrument set into vibration by human energy. This is disembodied aural beauty, the intoxication of sensuous perfume, the blaze of sunlight, the shimmer of moonlight on water. "And how is this done? It is done with love, with knowledge, with vision. It is also done with a technical equipment adequate to the demands of a glowing imagination. Only the perfect co-ordination of the strongest arms and the most independent fingers can produce such delicate suavity. Arms and fingers are not all, for Gieseking's pedaling was a miracle. He could pedal throughout changing harmonies, retaining each for its own identity; he could pedal throughout a melodic line, yet keep the progressive action of a cantabile. "The most kaleidoscopic mixtures of colors paradoxically emerge spotlessly clean and clear. Releases are as precise as attacks. Gieseking could increase or reduce dynamics in the space of a split second, from the subtlest pianissimo to the most sonorous fortissimo (and the other way around), and have it sound absolutely inevitable, all of a piece. He had unique command of suspended motion with vibration, like that of a hummingbird hovering over a flower. One hears a perfectly spaced, pearly articulation for some figuration, and above or below it another figuration will come through as undulation produced as though by a boneless and muscleless hand. And always the music came first, always the motion of the drama was carried forward. Such playing is the ultimate in mastery and sensuous elegance, the result of a scrupulous care that marks genius. Everything is present to the nth degree: knowledge, precision, tonal color, radiance, iridescence, limpidity. And their wonderful balances and blendings are luminous and wondrous. [French Impressionism's] range of resplendent expressivity extracted from Gieseking a rare state of inspiration, the kind that depersonalizes an artist and enables his auditors to catch glimpses of eternity."
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