“Everyone knows Debussy’s early piano piece ‘Clair de lune,’ ” writes Lloyd Schwartz in Thursday’s (10/18) Wall Street Journal (subscription required). “Fewer people know his scintillating late ballet ‘Jeux’ … regarded as a breakthrough in structure and tonality…. In his engaging critical biography ‘Debussy: A Painter in Sound,’ Stephen Walsh demonstrates with wit and intellectual muscle how these emblematic extremes of the composer’s career are inextricably connected…. Walsh, the author of admired books on Mussorgsky and Stravinsky … thinks some of Debussy’s musical ‘layering’ foreshadows Stravinsky…. One of the leitmotifs in this book is Debussy’s complex response to the example of Richard Wagner…. His music, like Wagner’s, becomes a continual unfolding of musical images, episodes and situations. [But] Debussy’s only opera, ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ … is practically whispered…. A more surprising theme is Debussy’s … unsuccessful almost lifelong attempt to write an opera based on [Poe’s] ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ … He also makes something quite moving of the triumph of ‘La Mer,’ including Debussy’s reluctant, nerve-wracking debut, in 1908, as the work’s conductor.”
Posted October 23, 2018
