Jean-Pierre Armengaud concludes his generally mediocre Debussy cycle with some of the choppiest, gawky, inelegant, and prosaic performances of the Études I’ve ever heard from a professional pianist. Cases in point: his labored fingerwork and super-cautious tempos throughout No. 1; his heavy-handed double-note technique in Nos. 2 and 4; No. 5’s octaves pounded out with little dynamic variety; No. 7’s not very supple chromatic figurations; No. 9’s effortful repeated notes; No. 11’s lack of delicacy and sketchy articulation of runs; and a gingerly approach to No. 12’s jumps (the outer octaves are always too soft in relation to the loud chords from which they spring). Similar heaviness weighs against Pour le Piano’s solidly executed outer movements and L’isle joyeuse’s climaxes. But Armengaud dispatches the Étude retrouvée (an earlier version of Etude No. 11) with more fluidity, assurance, and technical control than we hear elsewhere. Perhaps the distant, murky sonics take the edge off of Armengaud’s weaknesses, much as bathroom echo makes anyone’s singing in the shower sound good.
