Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Prologue/Moonlight
"Clair de Lune", extrait de la "Suite Bergamasque", L 75, n° 3
"Voiles", extrait de "Préludes pour piano", Livre I, L 117 n° 2
"The Girl With The Flaxen Hair", extrait de "Préludes pour piano", Livre I, L 117 n° 8
"Footsteps In The Snow", extrait de "Préludes pour piano", Livre I, L 117, n° 6
"The Snow is dancing", extrait de "Children's Corner", L 113, n° 4
"Gradus Ad Panassum", extrait de "Children's Corner"n L 113, n° 1
"Passepied", extrait de "Suite Bergamasque", L 75 n° 4
"Beauty", extrait de "Préludes pour piano", Livre I, L 117, n° 4
"Alternating Thirds", extrait de "Préludes pour piano", Livre II, L 123, n° 11

Marina Baranova (1981-)
Clair de Solenne

Marina Baranova, voix, piano, piano préparé, Fender Rhodes, harmonium

Enfant prodige du piano, aussi à l’aise les mains virevoltant sur le clavier que farfouillant dans son mécanisme - Inside ou Préparé -, soumettant sans difficulté Fender Rhodes ou Una Corda, donnant de la voix à l’occasion, Marina Baranova propose, avec ce cinquième disque, une exploration personnelle de l’œuvre de Claude Debussy. Introduite (une mise en musique du Clair de Lune de Verlaine) et conclue (Una Corda sur Field Recordings) par une courte composition personnelle, l’interprète déconstruit (« déplie ») quelques pièces maîtresses du compositeur, qu’elle dispose du crépuscule (Clair de Lune) à l’aube (Alternating Thirds), débarrassant de sa lumière impressionniste le voile sombre d’un esprit fasciné aussi par Wagner et Baudelaire. Baranova déploie sa palette sonore de l’enjouement de l’Una Corda (The Girl With The Flaxen Hair) au spleen inquiet de l’harmonium et des cordes pincées (Beauty / Les Sons et les Parfums Tournent dans l'Air du Soir). Certains puristes hululeront à la trahison, mais d’autres acclameront celle qui, dans la veine d’un Max Richter recomposant Les Quatre Saisons, offre à un public qui s’ignore l’occasion d’approcher sans la dévoyer une musique jusque-là méjugée. (Bernard Vincken)

Since Marina Baranova first played Clair de Lune as an eager nine-year-old a question had stayed with her: Was there another side to Debussy’s music, one influenced by his turbulent private life and tempestuous relationships? “When you think of the great impressionist painters, you think of light, and hope, and love,” she says. “But Debussy adored the darkness of Baudelaire, and was heavily influenced by Wagner. The titles he gave his pieces also hint at hidden meanings, so I thought it would be interesting to explore this ‘shadow’ side and my feelings towards it.” Now Marina Baranova's album Unfolding Debussy will be released on the 9th of March 2018 via Neue Meister label to mark the occasion of Claude Debussy's 100th day of death on the 25th of March 2018. Despite being “absolutely in love” with Debussy, Baranova had also grown tired of playing his work in the common, classical way. “It didn’t feel good, and I didn’t want to play them in grand, romantic ways.” Coming back to his music, she resolved to discover new ways of playing while exploring this darkness, and set about deconstructing some of his best loved pieces. It was here she had a vision, and the concept of “unfolding” his work took shape. “It’s like origami,” she explains. “You have this creation that has perfect form, but I was always interested in exploring the folds and the cracks; in looking inside, to see how it works. So I decided to unfold the music to discover these deeper meanings.” To emulate the richness of Debussy’s original compositions, Baranova sought a broader palette and different textures. “Every instrument has its own colour,” she says, and so a number of different pianos and keyboards were employed to help to weave her magic. An Una Corda, a Fender Rhodes, midi keyboards and a C. Bechstein grand piano all feature, as do a number of delays and arpeggiators; anything to match the mood and the colours she could see in her head. Unusually for a classical pianist, she took it upon herself to both write and sing lyrics for various tracks, something she claims “wasn’t a decision, but an intuition. At the start, this wasn’t my intention, but the words just came.” Verlaine’s Moonlight opens the record on ‘Intro’, Baranova’s breathy spoken word conveying just the right amount of drama and intrigue, but it’s ‘The Snow Is Dancing’ that sees her take the biggest risk. Working with singer songwriter Shane August, she retells the story taken from Children’s Corner from the point of view of two adults in the process of splitting up, their love as cold as the snow delicately falling past the window. With Unfolding Debussy, Baranova has created so much more than a simple homage to one of the greatest composers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. She’s given his work new meaning, uncovering hidden aspects and deeper connections, revealing the very human fragility behind the legend. “It’s for people who are open minded and already in love with classical music, but also for people who don’t know anything about it,” she says. “I would appreciate it if they listened and asked themselves: ‘What do the originals sound like?’” Nearly a hundred years after his death, Unfolding Debussy hopes to inspire a new generation of music lovers and ensure that his sensory majesty is not lost to the drifting sands of time. Even after all this time, the cultural titan can still conjure a million colours in the mind.