THE BEST 100
	The Musical Scene By Norman Lebrecht Debussy: Preludes Pascal Rogé Onyx: La Chaux-de -fonds, Switzerland (Salle de musique), January 2004 In the fallout from the collapse of classical recording, two former executives lunched over their shrunken future. Paul Moseley, marketing man at Decca, met Chris Craker, a producer of some 400 records whose boutique label, Black Box, had gone belly-up in a corporate takeover. What about the artists? they asked one another. What about all those rising stars who had received massive promotions from major labels and were now, in mid-life, consigned to the scrapheap? Surely a name must count for something in the new economy. For their new enterprise, named Onyx, Craker and Moseley recorded Viktoria Mullova (ex-Philips), Barbara Bonney (ex-DG) and the Borodin Quartet (ex-EMI) in music they had never tackled before. Mullova pitched into Vivaldi with a feral early-instrument band. Bonney sang Bernstein, the Borodins played a 60th anniversary recital. But the real catch was Pascal Rogé who, dumped by Decca, recorded the Debussy Preludes that had filled his mind since the age of eight. Rogé is the archetypal master of French pianism, heir to the Cortot panache, the subtlety of Casadesus. Style was paramount in his Preludes. A hair out of place, a soupcon of wrong flavouring, and the whole effect would be ruined. Each Prelude was a separate course, warm or cool, sombre or bien amusant. Rogé played as he wished, relieved of major-sales expectations, intent upon the text and subtext of a set that is seldom played entire. The preludes, said Rogé, were written for the player: ‘I can't conceive what the listener can enjoy, compared to the voluptuous delight of creating all those sounds, perfumes, colours … Sometimes I even fell guilty about experiencing so much pleasure in public. It's almost indecent.' This is, by any measure, a milestone recording on musical merity but it is also an indicator to whatever might lie ahead for the transmission of music in a post-recording age – a model for modest ventures by important artists, a thin but unbreakable chain of continuity. Before the record was out, Craker was appointed to a top job at Sony-BMG and Onyx acquired global distribution. It marked a glimmer, more likely a chimera, of new beginnings.

THE BEST 100

The Musical Scene By Norman Lebrecht

Debussy: Preludes Pascal Rogé Onyx: La Chaux-de -fonds, Switzerland (Salle de musique), January 2004

In the fallout from the collapse of classical recording, two former executives lunched over their shrunken future. Paul Moseley, marketing man at Decca, met Chris Craker, a producer of some 400 records whose boutique label, Black Box, had gone belly-up in a corporate takeover. What about the artists? they asked one another. What about all those rising stars who had received massive promotions from major labels and were now, in mid-life, consigned to the scrapheap? Surely a name must count for something in the new economy.

For their new enterprise, named Onyx, Craker and Moseley recorded Viktoria Mullova (ex-Philips), Barbara Bonney (ex-DG) and the Borodin Quartet (ex-EMI) in music they had never tackled before. Mullova pitched into Vivaldi with a feral early-instrument band. Bonney sang Bernstein, the Borodins played a 60th anniversary recital. But the real catch was Pascal Rogé who, dumped by Decca, recorded the Debussy Preludes that had filled his mind since the age of eight. Rogé is the archetypal master of French pianism, heir to the Cortot panache, the subtlety of Casadesus. Style was paramount in his Preludes. A hair out of place, a soupcon of wrong flavouring, and the whole effect would be ruined. Each Prelude was a separate course, warm or cool, sombre or bien amusant.

Rogé played as he wished, relieved of major-sales expectations, intent upon the text and subtext of a set that is seldom played entire. The preludes, said Rogé, were written for the player: ‘I can't conceive what the listener can enjoy, compared to the voluptuous delight of creating all those sounds, perfumes, colours … Sometimes I even fell guilty about experiencing so much pleasure in public. It's almost indecent.'

This is, by any measure, a milestone recording on musical merity but it is also an indicator to whatever might lie ahead for the transmission of music in a post-recording age – a model for modest ventures by important artists, a thin but unbreakable chain of continuity. Before the record was out, Craker was appointed to a top job at Sony-BMG and Onyx acquired global distribution. It marked a glimmer, more likely a chimera, of new beginnings.