Lugansky - Debussy, Images, Book II

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Images, Book II, L. 120 (1907) Nikolai Lugansky, 2019, Mariinsky Theatre [0:00] No. 1 - Cloches à travers les feuilles. Lent [4:20] No. 2 - Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût. Lent [9:29] No. 3 - Poissons d’or. Animé “Cloches à travers les feuilles (Bells Through the Leaves) Debussy first heard Javanese musicians at the Paris Universal Exposition and the sounds of the gamelan they played stayed with him, surfacing in the allusions to the instrument in the present piece. Writing about Java in 1913, he said, “There was once, and there still is, despite the evils of civilization, a race of delightful people who learnt music as easily as we learn to breathe. Their academy is the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, thousands of tiny sounds which they listen to attentively without ever consulting arbitrary treatises.” The bells of the title are initiated in the first two measures by way of a whole tone scale, from whic