Debussy La Mer

Meet the poetic sound patches of Claude Debussy (1862-1918), one of the greatest innovators of Western music. In an eventful period in his life, in which the composer left his wife and toured the coast of France with his new mistress, he wrote his impressionistic masterpiece La mer, an ode to the turbulence of the sea. Debussy was an ardent lover of William Turner and Claude Monet, whose colorful seascapes he translated into music through a rich palette of instruments. La mer, an exceptionally picturesque composition, captures the shine of the midday sun on the sea surface, the breaking of waves, the splashing of foam and the sparkling of water drops. In the first part, De l'aube a midi sur la mer, one can hear the sun rise majestically to its highest point in the sky, a process that leads to an ecstatic climax. In the second part, Jeux de vagues, the sea shows its kindest, most playful face, and in the third part, Dialogue du vent et de la mer, the wind and the waves become entangled in an intoxicating dance. La mer, a symphonic poem full of mood swings, seems to symbolize life as a whole, which is just as capricious as the sea, and subject to the same dynamics of ebb and flow. This lucid performance of La mer, by the Orchestre National De Lyon, is of the very highest quality.