Daria van den Bercken's Debussy - a personal selection
Few composers changed the course of music more radically than Claude Debussy, who died a hundred years ago this year. In this exclusive playlist, the pianist Daria van den Bercken presents a personal selection of the works by the composer that have meant most to her.
Read more…There are so very many different ways you can shed a light on Claude Debussy, and there is so much to say about this pivotal composer who changed the course of music. But let me keep this playlist personal – I hope it will also serve as an introduction to music that will take your breath away.
Debussy is for me – after Beethoven – the most shocking, compelling of composers. But my love for him came late. I was around 18 years old, having somehow missed out on his 'Arabesques' and 'Children's Corner' while learning the piano. No, the first thing I heard by Debussy and which made a profound impression was the String Quartet, premiered in 1893. I used to listen to it on tape with my headphones on before going to sleep: that is how much I wanted to be drawn into this new sound world.
If you want to get a bit of context of the artistic times and styles Debussy lived in, read writers and poets of his time. He wrote songs to many texts, including 'Le jet d'eau', included here, set to a poem by Baudelaire ("Your pretty eyes are tired, poor darling!").
Though I mysteriously missed out on the the Two Arabesques in my youth, I don't want you to miss out on them as well. So here is the first Arabesque: though written when he was in his 20s, it is still among his most famous works. In the next piano work of this playlist, written much later, we get to know Debussy the innovator. The title is poetic and very evocative: 'Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut' (Descent of the moon upon the temple that is no more). Debussy had a keen interest in the instruments of Eastern Asia, the sounds of which he encountered for the first time on the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889. In this piece, from the second book of piano 'Images', you hear the translation onto the piano of a gamelan to evoke images of Eastern Asia.
Debussy also wrote incredible, indispensable music for orchestra. It's difficult to make a choice, but I'd definitely recommend 'La Mer', a symphonic poem for orchestra. I've included the first movement, which evokes the sea in the first part of the day: morning to midday.
Debussy never went to Spain but managed to create a real Spanish style in much of his music. The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla said of 'La Soirée dans Grenade' that, "there is not even one measure of this music borrowed from the Spanish folklore, and yet the entire composition in its most minute details conveys admirably what Spain is". Music from that piece was reused in "La puerta del Vino", from Debussy's second book of 'Préludes' for piano. I've also included another work from that set, "Ondine", which takes us into the world of the tragic nymph who dies for her love after giving up her immortality.
As a chamber musician I have regularly worked with flautists, in particular with Dutch flautist Felicia van den End, who often programmes "Syrinx", a solo work that always leaves me listening in wonderment for a few minutes. The theme is mythological: Syrinx is yet another nymph and pursued by the god Pan. When trying to escape, she was changed by Pan into a reed from which he made a flute.
Now we get to the final two pieces. My next choice is again personal: I am a pianist, so here is another piano piece – but a very unknown one. Debussy never wrote a piano concerto, but he did write a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra when he was still in his 20s. It is very rarely performed, for no clear reason other than because it is an early piece that is romantic in style.
Finally, in 1915 Debussy started a project writing six sonatas for various instruments. He only managed to write three (for cello and piano; violin and piano; and harp, flute and viola) before his death in 1918, exactly 100 years ago. Here is the Cello Sonata's first movement, played by two giants of the musical world in the decades after Debussy's death: the composer Benjamin Britten and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.