Adding to my ongoing series on awesome piano music that everyone can enjoy, here are a few pieces by Claude Debussy, the great impressionist composer. As you'd expect from an impressionist, these are paintings in sound -- generally, the focus is on beauty, not pyrotechnics.
1. L'Isle Joyeuse (performed by Horowitz). This famous piece takes a little while to build, but the payoff is breathtaking.
2. Suite Bergamasque -- 1. Prelude (performed by François-Joël Thiollier). This is the first in the suite that includes everyone's favorite, Clair de Lune -- but the other, less known pieces, are just as deserving. I often play these as warm-ups -- they're so beautiful and musically rich I never get tired of them. Click through for the others in the suite.
3. Ondine, from 2nd Book of Preludes (performed by Robert Casadesus). SF/F readers should appreciate this one -- an impressively evocative sketch of everyone's water nymph. The first Debussy piece I ever played, it's stayed with me all these years.
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