Quatuor Danel & Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

The French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has won a whole raft of prizes for his recording of Debussy's complete works for solo piano. He shares his heightened awareness of timbre and his rich, transparent sound with Quatuor Danel. That's why we've asked precisely these two performers to play a series of Debussy 'watercolours' together. Our ears are already starting to tingle! Debussy composed his 'Danses sacrée et profane' for harp and strings at the request of instrument manufacturer Playel, in order to highlight the possibilities of the new chromatic harp. Nevertheless, Debussy worked out that the solo part was just as well suited to the piano as it was to the harp. His 1893 String Quartet betrays the strong influence of César Franck, for example in its cyclical build-up, in which one central motif runs through all four parts. A method that Franck had employed for the first time in his masterly Piano Quintet. Debussy went on to explore the tonal possibilities of the four instruments in more depth. The ebb and flow of shifting instrumental tints caused him to be labelled an 'impressionist'. Quatuor Danel proves that Debussy offers much more than just an atmospheric echo of Impressionism, and teases out all the score's emotional layers.