#8: Sea pictures
Leftovers
Last week the San Francisco Symphony played an Unsuk Chin premiere, Debussy’s La mer, and, with Joshua Bell, Vieuxtemps’s Violin Concerto No. 5.
I’d never seen a real soloist play Vieuxtemps — to think of the thousands of violin pieces written during the 19th century! I used to pore over the lists on violin-concerto.de but got too depressed thinking about the scores I’d never get to hear. That website is gone now but the heartbreaks keep coming. Wikipedia lists a piano trio Szymanowski withdrew, and USC’s Polish Music Center mentions Bacewicz’s incidental music for Troilus and Cressida, which premiered in 1960 but what then? And how difficult it is to track down recordings of Serge Nigg’s orphaned oeuvre.
Two weeks after the premiere of La mer Debussy’s daughter was born. She was called Claude-Emma after her mother and father but registered, as illegitimate children often were, to “unnamed parents.” At first I thought Debussy’s designation symphonic sketches noncommittal. Actually it’s apt: La mer is neither a symphony nor a symphonic poem, but a simultaneity, like the cubist landscape movies of David Hockney — “living impressions” — that were on display at the de Young Museum a decade ago. I miss that art and wonder if I would like it as much now.
A short honeymoon it was for Debussy and Eastbourne. Upon arrival he wrote, “What a place for working in! No noise, no pianos, or only delightful mechanical ones, no musicians talking about painting and no painters talking about music…” Then, a month later: “It’s a little English seaside town, as ridiculous as these sorts of places always are… too many draughts and too much music.” My dad gave me this book of Debussy’s letters, and shopping for Monsieur Croche’s music criticism I chose the Dover edition — cheaply bound, but with the addition of Busoni’s Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, rich in content.
Less generous: Jean Cocteau, writing about Debussy in his manifesto Cock and Harlequin. “Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites, and nocturnal scents; what we need is a music of the earth, every-day music. Enough of hammocks, garlands, and gondolas; I want someone to build me music I can live in, like a house.” I see the good in both kinds of music but have been erring on the earthly side especially as sumer is icumen in.
Wish List
Endorsements
Mussorgsky’s songs, especially the much-maligned cycle Sunless
Always, Adès — this week the Piano Quintet and Violin Concerto
Inverno In-Ver, the suite of orchestral miniatures by Niccolò Castiglioni that, among many pieces I’ve seen only once, has stuck with me
Explorations
I missed the boat on Rodion Shchedrin and am paddling furiously to catch up, starting with the orchestral works and of course the Violin Concerto
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