"The sea has been very good to me", wrote Debussy to his publisher shortly
before he finished "La Mer". "She has shown me all her moods." Debussy
began his three symphonic sketches in 1903. The work was premiered in Paris
on 15 October 1905. The first piece, "From Dawn Until Noon on the Sea",
begins with low, sustained strings which give an impression of the immense
power of the ocean. In the second piece, "The Play of the Waves", the ocean
whips itself into a fury, with rainbow colorings appearing and vanishing in
fountains of spray. The "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea" opens on a deep,
threatening note, as if announcing a coming storm. After a siren-like call,
the chorale heard in the first movement returns in an exultant climax.
"I truly admire this orchestra and hope it becomes better known abroad,"
confided Leonard Bernstein in 1989 to the audience in Rome's Auditorio Pio
before his concert of works by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) with the
prestigious "Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia." In the words of
Rome's "Il Giornale," Bernstein served up a "Debussy that is neither
ethereal nor shapeless, but uncommonly vital, caught in the full light of
noon."
