I can’t help but think that Debussy would have enjoyed fiercely the electronic marvels of today’s music production. If you watch the following video, even though the music is out of sync with the audio, around three minutes in the guy plays some passages with the back of one hand.
And this is decidedly turn-of-last-century composition. Pollini does a good rendition of Chopin’s Polonaise in Ab Major – though nothing other than sitting in front of a competent pianist does it true justice (it’s all about the player, not the instrument).
One of the first times I heard that was from a student, visiting her old teacher from France, on the beater plebe piano they use to teach the incoming stick-fingers and adult ‘hey i think i’ll learn piano’ crowd. It was amazing. Being just a few feet away helped. It’s sort of overwhelming, the sensation you can get from a truly talented player in person that just isn’t done justice on anything other than a very finely tuned system played back from masterful, flawless recordings. And even then, every space imparts it’s own dynamic to a sound, which is often mangled by sound reproduction equipment and more often the listening space. Natural reverb + artificial reverb is bad enough, but then you have the fact that your listening environment reverbs that whole signal one last time or two and, well, you’ve got mud.