Since Marina Baranova first played Clair de Lune as an eager nine-year-old a question had stayed with her: Was there another side to Debussy’s music, one influenced by his turbulent private life and tempestuous relationships? “When you think of the great impressionist painters, you think of light, and hope, and love,” she says. “But Debussy adored the darkness of Baudelaire, and was heavily influenced by Wagner. The titles he gave his pieces also hint at hidden meanings, so I thought it would be interesting to explore this ‘shadow’ side and my feelings towards it.” Now Marina Baranova’s album Unfolding Debussy will be released on the Neue Meister label to mark the occasion of the centenary of Claude Debussy’s death.

Moonlight opens the record on ‘Intro’, Baranova’s breathy spoken word conveying just the right amount of drama and intrigue, but it’s ‘The Snow is Dancing’ that sees her take the biggest risk. Working with singer songwriter Shane August, she retells the story taken from Children’s Corner from the point of view of two adults in the process of splitting up, their love as cold as the snow delicately falling past the window.

With Unfolding Debussy, Baranova has created so much more than a simple homage to one of the greatest composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. She’s given his work new meaning, uncovering hidden aspects and deeper connections, revealing the very human fragility behind the legend. “It’s for people who are open minded and already in love with classical music, but also for people who don’t know anything about it,” she says. “I would appreciate it if they listened and asked themselves: ‘What do the originals sound like?’” Nearly a hundred years after his death, Unfolding Debussy hopes to inspire a new generation of music lovers and ensure that his sensory majesty is not lost to the drifting sands of time. Even after all this time, the cultural titan can still conjure a million colours in the mind.

Tracklist:
1. Prologue: Moonlight (composition: Marina Baranova / lyrics: Paul Verlaine / English: Gertrude Hall Brownell)
2. Clair de Lune (composition: Claude Debussy / arrangement: Marina Baranova)
3. Voiles (Debussy/Baranova)
4. The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (Debussy/Baranova)
5. Footsteps in the Snow (Debussy/Baranova)
6. The Snow is Dancing (Debussy/Baranova / lyrics: Shane August)
7. Gradus ad Parnassum (Debussy/Baranova)
8. Passepied (Debussy/Baranova)
9. Beauty (Debussy/Baranova / lyrics: Charles Baudelaire / English: Cyril Scott)
10. Alternating Thirds (Debussy/Baranova)
11. Bonus Track: Clair de Solenne (Baranova)