Having heard composer/pianist Nöel Lee play Debussy marvelously in concert, I held similar hopes for these 1971 recordings, now inexpensively reissued. The piano itself, a Hornung & Müller, has a peculiar, burgundy-tinted sonority, whose timbral differentiation between registers typifies many Bösendorfer grands. It suits Debussy’s “hammerless piano” esthetic well, and Lee thoroughly exploits the instrument’s potential for tone color and alluring pedal effects in the Estampes, L’Isle Joyeuse, and the more texturally complex Préludes of Book Two. His tempos for the latter (and also throughout Book One) lean more toward the swift, al fresco Gieseking/Casadesus axis than the more ample, spacious Claudio Arrau, Jean-Rudolph Kars, Paul Jacobs, and (for Book One only) Zaidee Parkinson. The Images, however, are problematic. Lee’s blotchy articulation in Movement, slightly flustered figurations in Reflets dans l’eau, and doggedly literal approach to Poissons d’or cannot compete with Michelangeli’s Olympian control nor with Moravec’s shapely poetry. The engineering’s blurry resonance, plus some seriously out-of-tune notes, hardly help matters. Lee plays the first five Children’s Corner movements as simply and directly as you could wish, but the Golliwog’s Cakewalk is too brisk for fancy footwork. An uneven collection overall, but the Préludes are well worth hearing.
