Maris Gothoni plays Debussy Images Books 1 & 2 – live 1998

19 year old Maris Gothoni with the most cinematic interpretation of this work I've ever heard. When I first uploaded this a few months ago, I thought it was played by his father, Ralf Gothoni. No. Instead it's by a 19 year old who like Tarkovsky manages time and pace to manipulate expression in unexpected ways, resulting in his own visual and pellucid interpretation with broad expanses that separate it from the rest. I think there's something unique about this performance that leaves it in a special place of its own.

I'm going to leave in my original commentary from when I first uploaded it –

Sometimes you sit down in a room with someone who until that moment you didn't even know existed and you listen to them say what you thought you knew in a language you feel you've always known and they tell you something that is more than just the content and more than just the sound and somehow evokes a time in your life that was meaningful and a sense that who you're listening to has an inner bearing and way of being that you weren't aware you were without until just then. Ideally this is the start of a new intimate relationship, but in this case it just happens to be this particular recording. Granted, if you're a collector, it might be both :)

When I first listened to this performance it was like he was painting the Images in front of me. A new interp is one thing, but to make it startlingly visual–especially in a work teeming with that quality–takes more than just pianistic skill. The surfeit of recs of this work attest to that. His limpid sound is probably the first thing I noticed. That then his mastery of time. The latter is what seems to take this to special places. In a film sense I think he expresses something of the limited motion of an Antonioni landscape or cityscape, or the shocking clarity of image you sometimes see in films by Zvyagintsev.

In any case I hadn't heard a performance like this before and I think he expresses himself as only an artist can.

Book 1
00:00 - Reflets dans l'eau
05:07 - Hommage à Rameau
12:42 - Mouvement
Book 2
15:36 - Cloches à travers les feuilles
19:56 - Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut
25:42 - Poissons d'or

Видео Maris Gothoni plays Debussy Images Books 1 & 2 – live 1998 канала ADGO