Claude Debussy. Œuvres pour piano à quatre mains: Symphonie; Andante cantabile; Diane ouverture; Triomphe de Bacchus; Intermezzo; L'enfant prodigue; Divertissement; Printemps (review)

Three volumes (series 1, nos. 7–9) of the ongoing Œuvres complètes are dedicated to Claude Debussy's works for piano four-hands and for two pianos. Volume 9 will contain the most familiar of Debussy's works for piano four-hands: the Petite suite (1888–89), Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire (1890), Six épigraphes antiques (1914– 15), and the composer's own arrangement of La mer (1903–5). Volume 8, published in 1986 and edited by the pianist and composer Noël Lee, includes the works for two pianos: Debussy's transcription of the Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune (1894), Lindaraja (1901), and En blanc et noir (1915). Also edited by Lee, volume 7 contains only one complete work for piano four-hands, Printemps, which was published (in no less than four versions, including orchestral) under Debussy's oversight and during his lifetime. All the other pieces in the volume date from Debussy's student years and provide convincing illustrations of his maturing skills as a composer. Most of this music is published for the first time in this volume.

The earliest work in Lee's edition is the Symphonie, a single movement in B minor, composed in 1880 or early 1881 and dedicated to Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's patron, in whose Russian home Debussy spent the summer of 1880 and 1881 as household pianist. Based on the autograph held by the Glinka Museum in Moscow, the first publication of the Symphonie appeared in 1933 edited by N. Zhilaıev (Simfoniıa h-moll dlıa f-p. v chetyre ruki [Moscow: Ozgiz Muzgiz; reprint, Boca Raton, FL: Masters Music, 1990]); and again as Proizvedeniıa dlıa fortep'ıano v chetyre ruki (in Sobraniıe sochineniĭ dlıafortep'ıano, t.5 [Moscow: Izdatel'stvo muzyka, 1965]), edited by Konstantin Stepanovich Sorokin; and in a more recent edition by Ernst-Günter Heinemann (Symphonie für Klavier zu vier Händen, h-Moll [Munich: Henle, 1995]). In harmony and form, it is an impressive achievement for a boy of eighteen, although it reveals much more of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's influence than any adumbrations of the later Debussy style. Lee regards the newly published Andante cantabile in E major as the first movement of a three-movement work, of which the existing B-minor movement is the third (the title page reads Symphonie en si mineur / Andante / Air de ballet / Final). The second movement has yet to be found, or perhaps it was never composed. On the basis of external evidence, however, François Lesure considers the Andante cantabile to be "de peu postérieure à la Symphonie" (a bit later than the Symphony; Claude Debussy: Biographie critique suivie du catalogue de l'œuvre [Paris: Fayard, 2003], 475). The 1965 Russian volume also includes three dances from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake that Debussy arranged at Mme. von Meck's request and which she sent to P. Jürgenson for publication (Le lac des cygnes: Suite, tirée du ballet: piano à 4 mains [Moscow, 1880]). Lee notes that Debussy's name did not appear on the publication, probably because such an attribution would have been contrary to the rules of the Paris Conservatoire.

The Diane ouverture, composed in 1881, was probably planned as a prelude to Debussy's earliest operatic composition, Diane au bois, on Th...