Recording of the original version of Debussy's La Mer?

[Bruckner is God]

Debussy revised the score of La Mer at least twice.
I was wondering if there are any recordings of the original version?
I would very much like to hear it.

[RJR]

In a book of interviews (Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations, ed. B. Monsaingeon, 1998), the great Ukrainian/ Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter called La mer "A piece that I rank alongside the St. Matthew Passion and the Ring cycle as one of my favorite works" (p. 121). Richter said further, on listening to his favorite recording (by Roger Désormière), "La mer again; shall I ever tire of listening to it, of contemplating it and breathing its atmosphere? And each time is like the first time! An enigma, a miracle of natural reproduction; no, even more than that, sheer magic!" (p. 187).

Richter also mentioned two other Soviet admirers of the work: "One day, after listening to this work, Anna Ivanovna exclaimed, 'For me, it's exactly the same miracle as the sea itself!'" (p. 171.). Richter also said that for his teacher, the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus, La mer was "the work by Debussy that he loved above all others ('Slava, put on La mer,' he almost always used to say whenever he came round here.)" (p. 177).

Of the Désormière recording, which he played for Neuhaus, Richter said it is "The most beautiful in the whole history of the gramophone." (p. 121).

You should also go to Peter Gutmann's website for his reviews on many recordings of La Mer.

[snyprrr]

bump- in the market

[snyprrr]

bump- in the market

... though, maybe the regular version?... is there a Thread?...

[Drasko]

Debussy did make some considerable changes to La Mer, audible even to those who can't read score (like me), between first publication (1905) and second (1909). Most notable removing horn/trumpet fanfare from climax of third movement and changing cornet flourish into doubling the rest of the brass at the very end, also excising one comlete bar somewhere in the first movement. I'm sure there are peoople here who can address these technical details better than me.

But the problem is that it the publisher wasn't very consistent with keeping only revised score in print, and the conductors even less so about using it, so the recordings are all over the place and they don't generally even say what version are they using (or what out of which version).

To best of my knowledge Boulez observes all revisions while Munch observes none. Most of others are somewhere in between.

My personal favorites (unrelated to which version they use) would be:

Boulez/Cleveland on DG (his earlier CBS recording has many fans but I haven't heard it)
Markevitch/Lamoureux on DG (live one on EMI with NDRSO is bit rough but very tense)
Munch/Boston on RCA
Mravinsky/Leningrad on Russian Disc

[Mirror Image]

Thought I would reintroduce Debussy's La Mer for our members and give it a proper overview (from Wikipedia):



General Information:

La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (French for The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), or simply La mer (i.e. The Sea), is an orchestral composition (L 109) by the French composer Claude Debussy. It was started in 1903 in France and completed in 1905 on the English Channel coast in Eastbourne. The premiere was given by the Lamoureux Orchestra under the direction of Camille Chevillard on 15 October 1905 in Paris. The piece was initially not well received - partly because of inadequate rehearsal and partly because of Parisian outrage over Debussy's having recently left his first wife for the singer Emma Bardac. But it soon became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works, and became more so in the ensuing century. The first recording was made by Piero Coppola in 1928.

Instrumentation:

La mer is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tamtam, glockenspiel, 2 harps and strings.

Movements:

A typical performance of this piece lasts about 23 or 24 minutes. It is in three movements:
(~09:00) "De l'aube à midi sur la mer" - très lent (si mineur)
(~06:30) "Jeux de vagues" - allegro (do dièse mineur)
(~08:00) "Dialogue du vent et de la mer" - animé et tumultueux (do dièse mineur)
Usually translated as:
"From dawn to noon on the sea" or "From dawn to midday on the sea" - very slowly (B minor)
"Play of the Waves" - allegro (C sharp minor)
"Dialogue of the wind and the sea" or "Dialogue between wind and waves" - animated and tumultuous (C sharp minor)

Interpretation:

La mer is a masterpiece of suggestion and subtlety in its rich depiction of the ocean, which combines unusual orchestration with daring impressionistic harmonies. The work has proven very influential, and its use of sensuous tonal colours and its orchestration methods have influenced many later film scores. While the structure of the work places it outside of both absolute music and programme music (see below on the title "Three symphonic sketches") as those terms were understood in the early 20th century, it obviously uses descriptive devices to suggest wind, waves and the ambience of the sea. But structuring a piece around a nature subject without any literary or human element to it - neither people, nor mythology, nor ships are suggested in the piece - also was highly unusual at the time.

Debussy called La mer "three symphonic sketches," avoiding the loaded term symphony.[1] Yet the work is sometimes called a symphony; it consists of two powerful outer movements framing a lighter, faster piece which acts as a type of scherzo. But the author Jean Barraque (in "La Mer de Debussy," Analyse musicale 12/3, June 1988,) describes La mer as the first work to have an "open" form - a devenir sonore or "sonorous becoming... a developmental process in which the very notions of exposition and development coexist in an uninterrupted burst." Simon Trezise, in his book Debussy: La Mer (Cambridge, 1994) notes, however, that "motifs are constantly propagated by derivation from earlier motifs" (p. 52).

Simon Trezise notes that "for much of La Mer, Debussy spurns the more obvious devices associated with the sea, wind, and concomitant storm in favor of his own, highly individual vocabulary" (p. 48-49). Caroline Potter (in "Debussy and Nature" in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, p. 149) adds that Debussy's depiction of the sea "avoids monotony by using a multitude of water figurations that could be classified as musical onomatopoeia: they evoke the sensation of swaying movement of waves and suggest the pitter-patter of falling droplets of spray" (and so forth), and — significantly — avoid the arpeggiated triads used by Wagner and Schubert to evoke the movement of water.

The author, musicologist and pianist Roy Howat has observed, in his book Debussy in Proportion, that the formal boundaries of La mer correspond exactly to the mathematical ratios called The Golden Section. Trezise (p. 53) finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable," but cautions that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy consciously sought such proportions.

Reception:

In a book of interviews[2], the great Ukrainian/Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter called La mer "A piece that I rank alongside the St. Matthew Passion and the Ring cycle as one of my favorite works". Richter said further, on listening to his favorite recording (by Roger Désormière), "La mer again; shall I ever tire of listening to it, of contemplating it and breathing its atmosphere? And each time is like the first time! An enigma, a miracle of natural reproduction; no, even more than that, sheer magic!"[3] Richter also mentioned two other Soviet admirers of the work: "One day, after listening to this work, Anna Ivanovna exclaimed, 'For me, it's exactly the same miracle as the sea itself!'" [4]. Richter also said that for his teacher, the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus, La mer was "the work by Debussy that he loved above all others ('Slava, put on La mer,' he almost always used to say whenever he came round here.)"[5]. Of the Désormière recording, which he played for Neuhaus, Richter said it is "The most beautiful in the whole history of the gramophone.

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A few of my favorite La Mer recordings: both of Boulez's (Sony and DG), Karajan (Karajan Gold performance), Martinon, and Haitink.