I'm not an easy person to please when it comes to the piano music of Debussy and Ravel. Far too many performances and recordings over the years have perpetrated classic French pianism as a fuzzy wash of colors with the sustained pedal practically nailed to the floor. This is wrong. If we agree that some of the acknowledged masters of the French School included Cortot, Saint-Saëns, Darre, and Robert and Gaby Casadesus, and that we should take their recordings, teachings, writings, and interviews seriously, then we can reasonably suggest that this school is founded upon clarity of texture, meticulous preparation, fastidious execution (yes, even Cortot during his prime), and a lean, attractive sonority. Judged by these standards and by the CD in front of me, Madeleine Forte is another master of the French School, and their equal. She plays Debussy in a manner that would do her old master Cortot proud, with a clear-eyed vigor, pearlescent tone, and attention to detail that does not belie the emotional content of the music but only makes it more coherent.

Forte began her studies in France with her aunt, and then continued with Cortot and Kempff. She won several international competition prizes in the 1960s, and took her bachelor's and master's degrees from Juilliard, where she studied with Rosina Lhevinne and Martin Canin. She subsequently received her Ph.D. from New York University with a dissertation on Messiaen's music. This relatively spare bio (even if we make allowances for a good deal of concertizing and teaching) does scant justice to the kind of playing Forte reveals on this CD. One can only speculate concerning her lack of recording opportunities in the years since her schooling. Recording labels not willing to take a chance? A slow maturing process? A career enveloped in the pleasures and pressures of academia? Whatever the cause, there's certainly no indication in this Debussy-playing of a partially formed talent, or a reticent, workmanlike drudge. Forte gives us the composer in his entirety—the elegance and the charm, but also the magnificent rhetoric, the revolutionary ideas, the harmonic and technical hurdles as clear and fresh as they were when Debussy walked home with bread under his arm for Emma Bardac and his little Chou-chou.

Constant attention to the logical progression of the music is the most observable feature I've heard in Forte's Debussy. She clearly follows Cortot's dictum that any phrase in a composition, should be viewed as a continuing musical dialectic, and should function within time as part of the continuity. Her Debussy isn't a walk through a terrain whose only features lie in proximity to their ostensible dramatic goals. There are no throwaway passages, either interpretatively or technically, in Forte's work. Everything contributes to the effect of the whole. It's also clear from her playing that Madeleine Forte has the chops to perform just about as fast as she wants, but she doesn't, sacrificing velocity for clearly articulated passagework. This is nowhere more apparent than in the Toccata from Pour le piano, which under Forte's ministrations (and thanks to her spare pedaling) emerges with a level of harmonic and figurative detail that it all too often lacks in the care of performers who wish to impress. Well, Forte impresses too, just not in the same way. While I have been overwhelmed by the Toccata as it burned brightly in the hands of so many firebrands, when Forte plays it I can admire both her exquisite style and the composer of such clever music.

There's certainly no lack of fine Debussy pianists available, and some have become regular visitors on my turntable and CD player over the years. Paul Jacobs (Nonesuch 71365) employs the pedal with moderate frequency and takes a slightly freer, slower approach with rhythms, but his phrasing is often similar to Forte's, and, given the differences in background, it's interesting that he often arrives at the same conclusions regarding how to treat specific phrases. Werner Haas (Philips Duo 438718) makes something more conventionally Romantic of the Images through his phrasing, setting his sights for the climaxes, while François-Joël Thiollier (Naxos 8.553292) gives the music a coloristic wash that F ve found increasingly antithetical as the years have passed. Then there's a personal favorite, and an admitted stylistic anachronism: a performance of Images, Book I, recorded by Emil Gilels in the Soviet in 1963—about as French as the Don, but with a limpid tone and joyful fleetness that make something wonderfully personal of Reflets dans l'eau.

The piano sound on this release is strong, forward, and natural, but slightly muddy in the bass. It also has a level of hiss~not an especially loud one, but hardly something I thought to hear again this side of my analog LP collection. Presumably the analog part of this CD's recording process was felt necessary to preserve some portion of the sound that might otherwise be lost through digital technology, but I'm not perfectly happy with the results.

Liner notes were provided by Allen Forte, the pianist's husband, and Battell Professor of Music at Yale University. They are excellent of their kind, in which a thematic analysis is presented of each piece (though I would take mild exception to Rameau's portrayal as "the famous 18th-century French composer of opera," since his harpsichord music is nearly as well known).

I'm quite pleased with this release. It's my first exposure to Madeleine Forte's fine musicianship, and, if her Debussy is at all typical, I look forward to hearing many more releases of hers in the future.

Barry Brenesal