Since 2020 French pianist Jean-Paul Gasparian (born in 1995) has been artist-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation, where he recorded this Debussy recital in 2022. The resonant ambience and slightly distant engineering befits Gasparian’s broadly sculpted renditions of the slower, more introspective selections in Debussy’s Preludes Book I.
His spacious and curvy renditions of Danseuses de Delphes, Les sons et les parfums tournet dans l’air du soir, Des pas sur la neige, and La Cathédrale engloutie are languid to a fault; they evoke but don’t quite surpass the refined beauty of Jean-Rodolphe Kars’ similarly conceived Decca recordings from the early 1970s.
The dance-inspired Preludes Nos. 5, 9, 11, and 12 may be more incisively articulated than the sonics reveal, but there’s plenty of lilt. In Estampes, Gasparian impressively clarifies Pagodes’ textural layers, although his tendency to round off phrases softens the polyrhythmic momentum; both Robert Casadesus and Sviatoslav Richter bring gamelan-inspired polyphony into bolder relief. I also prefer stronger tempo relationships between sections and a more consistent pulse to the habanera motive in La soirée dans Grenade, not to mention more lightness and fluidity in Jardins sous la pluie.
However, the pianist plays his father Gérard’s effective and idiomatic transcription of Ronde de printemps from Images for Orchestra stunningly well. He balances foreground and background material with effortless aplomb and sweeping elegance. There’s not a trace of thickness, even in busy passages where fast runs and cruel double notes scramble for dominance–and did Gasparian bring in a harpist to play that upward glissando right before the end? I’d go so far as to say that Ronde de printemps alone is worth the price of this release.
