Except for a single concert in Honolulu last spring (TIME, June 2), Pianist Walter Gieseking has not attempted to play in the U.S. since the unseemly hassle over his Manhattan appearance in 1949. But he is still available on records, as Columbia emphasized last week with a release of six Gieseking LPs.
Gieseking, a German who plays the French impressionists better than most Frenchmen, devotes four sides to all 24 of the Preludes of Debussy (Girl with the Flaxen Hair, Sunken Cathedral, General La-vine—eccentric, etc.). Their delicate, pastel coloration, slippery sonorities, puckish humor...
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