The Life of Debussy in six Movements
Festival Theatre Series compiler, pianist and narrator: Zoltán Kocsis Claude Debussy is one of those composers whose oeuvre is generally summarised by one or two works, says Zoltán Kocsis, who has recorded almost all of the French composer’s works for piano, while presenting a number of his rarely heard orchestral compositions as a conductor. The goal of this six-part series, which presents Debussy’s life and work against a historical and literary background, is to shed light on the lesser-known details of this extraordinarily varied career. “His was an uncommonly exciting life,” says Kocsis of Debussy, recalling “how the in-house pianist of Nadezhda von Meck first became the freshly discovered composer of Prélude à l'après-midi d’un faune who revolutionised French music, and later a prophet in his own land with Pelléas et Mélisande, and how he was able to create something new even though illness when writing his final works…” The closing evening in the series deals with the years of the Great War, when Debussy espoused chauvinistic views in turning to France’s distant past, and when he signed perhaps the most important compositions of his life as a “musicien français”.