This is a miraculous album, and in many places revelatory. Hough achieves the impossible: hiding and revealing at the same time, allowing lines to sound together in balance without ending up in the murk. Debussy's radical harmony and chewy chords and clusters are all there, but naturally, breathing. Hough lets the music expand out in vivid color from the underlying rhythm, never getting into awkward corners like so many pianists do when they rush a section. This lets you hear many details that are otherwise muffed, even when they go by quietly, and it lends a physicality (or "physics-ness") to the musical shapes. Hough certainly makes interpretive choices, and I don't always agree, but overall what strikes me is a sense of honest music-making, that a deep and deeply-skilled musician is putting himself behind the music to characterize it as best he can. And just wait till you hear the last track: The Isle Of Joy. I've heard this piece ruined too many times (usually by rushing though it) and I've always imagined it played like it is here — except I could never have imagined it this good.

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