Debussy: Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, Noctures, La mer & Berceuse heroique

by Paavo Järvi / Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Debussy's idea was to write not a programmatic piece but rather a musical equivalent of the mysterious world of Mallarm's poem "Afternoon of a Faun." He rose to the challenge of creating this unprecedented world of sounds and colours. Debussy's Nocturnes had a more convoluted genesis. The piece began as Trois scenes au cruscule, specifically composed for Debussy's upcoming tour of the U.S. in 1892, but fell by the wayside once the tour was cancelled. Two years later, he transformed it into a violin concerto for the Belgian virtuoso Eugne Ysae (coincidentally, Ysae later became Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony.) In 1896, Debussy informed Ysae the work was completed, but a year later the composer had second thoughts. Ysae never got to see the concerto, and the score has been lost since. Debussy started once again to recast the three movements. By 1899, they were complete in final form without a solo violin, and the third movement having acquired a wordless women's chorus. La Mer, one of Debussy's most performed and recorded works, is written about the sea - although not actually written at the ocean, as the composer thought it would distract him and make the act of composition superfluous. Instead, Debussy composed the work in the mountains of Burgundy, where "my old friend the sea, always inexhaustible and beautiful," was but a sensuous memory. Debussy composed Berceuse Hroque in 1914, shortly after the fall of Belgium at the beginning of World War I, to honour the Belgian king and people. Debussy found the Belgian national anthem hard to write in particular, which the composer had intended to figure prominently in the piece, "it evokes no feeling of heroism in the hearts of those who were not brought up with it," Debussy said at the time. "It was all I was able to achieve, having been physically affected by the proximity of hostilities, not to mention my own feelings of inferiority in military matters.