Inspiration (Xavier De Maistre)

As of late, I've been struggling a bit with a gorgeous but rhythmically difficult Debussy piece called Premiere Arabesque. There's a difficult triplet polyrhythm that occurs throughout the entire piece, and I just can't seem to get it exactly right. I've also been struggling with how to phrase certain passages. In pieces like Premiere Arabesque and Clair de Lune, phrasing can be everything. So, I turned to one of my favorite harpists, Xavier De Maistre, for inspiration. I took out my CD (yes, they still exist!) of Xavier De Maistre playing works of Debussy on the harp, and listened to his interpretation of two Debussy pieces, Premiere Arabesque and Clair de Lune. Listening to De Maistre's interpretation and phrasing was quite helpful, as he really seems to understand how to "sing" a phrase, not just play it. He plays the difficult rhythms so well that they don't sound cumbersome and tricky; rather, they sound light and playful. Going forward, I plan to think about De Maistre's phrasing while working on the piece as a whole. I wholeheartedly recommend listening to his version of Clair de Lune .
Secondly, though unrelated to harp itself, I've found musical inspiration in one of my favorite musical performances of all time, Marc-André Hamelin's performance of Un Sospiro. The piece itself is beautiful, but few carry it off to the separate realm of musical beauty that Hamelin does through phrasing. When he plays, he truly captures the meaning of the title--A Sigh...