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Claude Debussy.

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Claude Debussy. OEuvres pour piano a quatre mains: Symphonie; Andante cantabile; Diane ouverture; Triomphe de Bacchus; Intermezzo; L'enfant prodigue; Divertissement; Printemps. Edition de Noel Lee. Paris: Durand, c2002. (OEuvres completes de Claude Debussy, ser. 1: OEuvres pour piano, vol. 7.) (Musica gallica.) [Gen. pref. in Fr., Eng., p. xi; foreword, p. ix-xxi; bibliographie selective, p. xxiii; score, 227 p.; abbrevs., p. 229; crit. notes in Fr., Eng., p. 231-41; variantes, remarques, p. 243-58; appendix, p. 259-63; facsims., p. 265-79. Cloth. D. & F. 15455; DB 15455; Hal Leonard no. HL 50564480; ISBN 0-634-08213-2. $119.95.]

Three volumes (series 1, nos. 7-9) of the ongoing OEuvres completes 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 ecossaise sur un theme populaire (1890), Six epigraphes 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 Noel Lee, includes the works for two pianos: Debussy's transcription of the Prelude a l'apres 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...