Jean-Yves Thibaudet calls Debussy’s Préludes ‘an immersive journey’

French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet says of Debussy’s Préludes: “I have lived with most of them for my entire life.” 

“Some I played as a young kid, some I learned much later. And I recorded them in the late ’90s. So they’ve really been an important part of my life for a very long time,“ he said in an interview with the Voice of Orange County. ”But playing them in their entirety in a concert had been an unrealized dream of mine for many, many years.”

In France, they are key to the student repertoire, ranging in difficulty from simple to difficult, “they’re worthwhile studies that push pianists’ technical and interpretive boundaries.”

Though the works are part of the standard classical piano literature, all 24 are rarely performed in a single concert, as Thibaudet will do in an SCP Piano recital Jan. 19.

Thibaudet agrees that each prélude is “a self-contained musical statement.” Each one, with its own richly evocative title, “creates its own special sonic universe,” he said. But he also believes they need to be experienced in a single setting. “It’s like an immersive adventure journey. Debussy takes you to so many different, exotic places.”

“Debussy really created a brand-new language. His harmony and rhythms, they were completely different from anything that came before. The Préludes represent an incredibly important moment in the history of piano literature.” — Jean-Yves Thibaudet

That immersiveness is a big part of the challenge for him, Thibaudet said. “Some of them are very short, so you have to immediately create something. It’s like an actor playing 24 very different characters in a single performance.”

As an example of the works’ technical challenges, Thibaudet singled out “Des pas sur la neige” (“Footprints in the Snow”), which he describes as ”deceptively minimalist."

“When you look at it on paper, technically it doesn’t seem at all difficult. There aren’t that many notes. It’s very slow,“ he said. ”But you have to create all these different layers of sound — do so much with so little.”

Thibaudet describes the Préludes as “the perfect distillation” of Debussy’s revolutionary style. “He really created a brand-new language. His harmony and rhythms, they were completely different from anything that came before. The Préludes represent an incredibly important moment in the history of piano literature.”

Some pianists play Debussy’s Préludes out of order. Thibaudet doesn’t object to that practice, but he prefers to play them in the order that Debussy originally envisioned. “I think Debussy said many times that they were not connected. But now, after playing them for so many years, I could not think of playing them in a different order because they’re just fixed in my mind,“ he said. ”I don’t think it’s of great importance, but I just got used to it, and I think the order actually works very well.”