Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Alessandra Ammara’s acclaimed Debussy survey continues with Volume 3, centering on the remarkable 12 Études composed in just two months during the summer of 1915. Written on the Normandy coast during a period of illness and financial strain, these late works capture Debussy’s final burst of creativity, inspired once again by the sea.
💎 🎵 Purchase, stream or download (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Presto): pianoclassics.lnk.to/DebussyCompletePianoVol3ID
🎬🎮 These tracks are available for sync licensing in videos, films, TV shows, games, advertising, and more. For licensing inquiries: info@brilliantclassicslicensing.com
Composer: Claude Debussy
Artist: Alessandra Ammara (piano)
Principally surveying the Préludes and Images, the first two volumes of Alessandra Ammara’s Debussy survey have attracted praise for their affinity with the composer’s elusive but painterly idiom. According to Fanfare, ‘Ammara reveals her sensitivity to the Debussy sound world, rife with blurred outlines of objects and infiltrated with variegated light, in the manner of the painter J.M.W. Turner.’
For Volume 3, her focus turns principally to the set of 12 Etudes which miraculously took shape over the course of just two months, in August and September 1915. Plagued by ill-health following the diagnosis of rectal cancer in 1909, presented with the pressing need to increase his earnings through editing and performing, Debussy wrote the Etudes while staying in a town near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast. Emerging from a period of severe depression, he once more took inspiration from the sea in a sudden and final burst of creativity which also saw the composition of the suite for two pianos, En blanc et noir, and the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.
However, it is the 12 Etudes which have come both to define Debussy’s late style – on the piano, as a counterpart to his ballet for Diaghilev, Jeux – and to present both a model and a challenge to later composers of piano etudes from Tansman to Ligeti. Debussy himself said that they were “a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands”.
While the dry titles of the individual Etudes serve to conceal their rich and turbulent inner landscape, aspects of their invention are prefigured by the earlier works on Alessandra Ammara’s album. The three movements of Estampes are as much ‘studies’ in their way as the Etudes – of particular kinds of movement refracted through the images of a Japanese pagoda, a Spanish evening and a garden in the rain. From 1904, and capturing the passion of his affair with Emma Bardac, L’isle Joyeuse references both the island of Jersey and a painting by Watteau, but it also serves as a study in superimposed scales.
Tracklist:
12 Études:
0:00:00 I. Pour les cinq doigts (after M. Czerny) – Sagement. Animé, mouvement de gigue
0:03:27 II. Pour les tierces – Moderato, ma non troppo
0:07:29 III. Pour les quartes – Andantino con molto
0:13:47 IV. Pour les sixtes – Lento
0:18:24 V. Pour les octaves – Joyeux et emporté, librement rythmé
0:21:24 VI. Pour les huit doigts – Vivamente, molto leggiero e legato
0:23:12 VII. Pour les degrés chromatiques – Scherzando, animato assai
0:25:41 VIII. Pour les agréments – Lento, rubato et leggiero
0:31:22 IX. Pour les notes répétées – Scherzando
0:34:58 X. Pour les sonorités opposées – Moderé, sans lenteur
0:40:27 XI. Pour les arpèges composés – Dolce e lusingando
0:45:21 XII. Pour les accords – Décidé, rythmé, sans lourdeur
Estampes:
0:50:09 I. Pagodes
0:55:23 II. La soirée dans Grenade
1:00:31 III. Jardins sous la pluie
1:04:40 D’un cahier d’esquisses
1:09:49 L’isle Joyeuse
1:16:08 Masques
📲 Follow us on Social media: @BrilliantClassics & @PianoClassics
#Debussy #12Etudes #PianoWork #PianoMusic #ClassicalMusic #AlessandraAmmara #ClassicalPiano #Piano #CompletePianoWorks #Vol3 #PianoClassics #BrillianClassics
Alessandra Ammara’s acclaimed Debussy survey continues with Volume 3, centering on the remarkable 12 Études composed in just two months during the summer of 1915. Written on the Normandy coast during a period of illness and financial strain, these late works capture Debussy’s final burst of creativity, inspired once again by the sea.
💎 🎵 Purchase, stream or download (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Presto): pianoclassics.lnk.to/DebussyCompletePianoVol3ID
🎬🎮 These tracks are available for sync licensing in videos, films, TV shows, games, advertising, and more. For licensing inquiries: info@brilliantclassicslicensing.com
Composer: Claude Debussy
Artist: Alessandra Ammara (piano)
Principally surveying the Préludes and Images, the first two volumes of Alessandra Ammara’s Debussy survey have attracted praise for their affinity with the composer’s elusive but painterly idiom. According to Fanfare, ‘Ammara reveals her sensitivity to the Debussy sound world, rife with blurred outlines of objects and infiltrated with variegated light, in the manner of the painter J.M.W. Turner.’
For Volume 3, her focus turns principally to the set of 12 Etudes which miraculously took shape over the course of just two months, in August and September 1915. Plagued by ill-health following the diagnosis of rectal cancer in 1909, presented with the pressing need to increase his earnings through editing and performing, Debussy wrote the Etudes while staying in a town near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast. Emerging from a period of severe depression, he once more took inspiration from the sea in a sudden and final burst of creativity which also saw the composition of the suite for two pianos, En blanc et noir, and the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.
However, it is the 12 Etudes which have come both to define Debussy’s late style – on the piano, as a counterpart to his ballet for Diaghilev, Jeux – and to present both a model and a challenge to later composers of piano etudes from Tansman to Ligeti. Debussy himself said that they were “a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands”.
While the dry titles of the individual Etudes serve to conceal their rich and turbulent inner landscape, aspects of their invention are prefigured by the earlier works on Alessandra Ammara’s album. The three movements of Estampes are as much ‘studies’ in their way as the Etudes – of particular kinds of movement refracted through the images of a Japanese pagoda, a Spanish evening and a garden in the rain. From 1904, and capturing the passion of his affair with Emma Bardac, L’isle Joyeuse references both the island of Jersey and a painting by Watteau, but it also serves as a study in superimposed scales.
Tracklist:
12 Études:
0:00:00 I. Pour les cinq doigts (after M. Czerny) – Sagement. Animé, mouvement de gigue
0:03:27 II. Pour les tierces – Moderato, ma non troppo
0:07:29 III. Pour les quartes – Andantino con molto
0:13:47 IV. Pour les sixtes – Lento
0:18:24 V. Pour les octaves – Joyeux et emporté, librement rythmé
0:21:24 VI. Pour les huit doigts – Vivamente, molto leggiero e legato
0:23:12 VII. Pour les degrés chromatiques – Scherzando, animato assai
0:25:41 VIII. Pour les agréments – Lento, rubato et leggiero
0:31:22 IX. Pour les notes répétées – Scherzando
0:34:58 X. Pour les sonorités opposées – Moderé, sans lenteur
0:40:27 XI. Pour les arpèges composés – Dolce e lusingando
0:45:21 XII. Pour les accords – Décidé, rythmé, sans lourdeur
Estampes:
0:50:09 I. Pagodes
0:55:23 II. La soirée dans Grenade
1:00:31 III. Jardins sous la pluie
1:04:40 D’un cahier d’esquisses
1:09:49 L’isle Joyeuse
1:16:08 Masques
📲 Follow us on Social media: @BrilliantClassics & @PianoClassics
#Debussy #12Etudes #PianoWork #PianoMusic #ClassicalMusic #AlessandraAmmara #ClassicalPiano #Piano #CompletePianoWorks #Vol3 #PianoClassics #BrillianClassics
