Pointing out the lack of attention paid to Debussy’s 150th birthday (which is today), Anthony Tommasini thinks we take him for granted:

We like to think we know and admire Debussy. Ah, Debussy the great Impressionist! For painting there is Monet. For music, Debussy. “La Mer,” how gorgeous. There are the inventive piano pieces, with their watery textures and evocative titles like “Estampes” and “Images.” And of coures the diaphanous orchestral beauties of “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” 

Pierre-Laurant Aimard, who has a recording of Debussy’s Preludes coming out in October, thinks we don’t really know him at all–and probably never will:

We don’t always know what it (Debussy’s music) is about …. because things are mixed, they are also not completely said. Things remain hidden.

Case in point for Aimard is Jeux:

Debussy wrote Jeux on commission from the Ballets Russes; audiences didn’t take to Nijinsky’s choreography at its premiere in 1913, and the music even today can be daunting. As Aimard puts it, “we can’t find any more rules in terms of orchestration, of form, of harmony, of music-making.”

There’s a particular moment in the opening of the piece where Debussy repeats a short gesture three times. It’s done with such unexpected suddenness, that at first you think it must be a mistake in the recording (like a record skipping). Hearing it live for the first time, in 1913, must have been completely disorienting.

For Tommasini, Debussy’s innovation was in downplaying the role of pulse, in writing “whole stretches of static music.” With its twists and turns, Jeux shows that what’s really special about Debussy is not that his music stops time, but that it moves us through it in so many novel, mind-blowing ways.

Back in 1999, the Rochester Academy of Medicine commissioned Lorenzo Palomo to write a piece commemorating its centennial. The result was Andalusian Divertimento, which Rebecca Pennys and herNew Arts Trio performed at the 2001 anniversary celebration:

Through this project, the Spanish composer met Sid Sobel, a Flower City oncologist with a particular passion for The Sneetches. They hit it off, and Sobel proposed another commission, this one to set his favorite Seuss story to music.

Tomorrow, the Oberlin Orchestra gives the world premiere of Palomo’s Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches, fulfilling Sobel’s dream of using a new medium to convey the story’s message of tolerance, and showcasing Palomo’s flair for orchestral writing.

Unlike so much of Palomo’s other music, Sneetches has little of that characteristic (some might say stereotypical) Spanish sound; it does, however, have a strong enough rhythmic flow to move the story along, and lots of catchy melodic hooks to complement the recitation of the story (it’s a melodrama).

Sneetches makes its way to Rochester on May 5 and 6 when the RPO and Arild Remmereit perform it with John de Lancie. Everyone at work knows de Lancie as Q, but I’ll remember him as the air traffic controller on Breaking Bad. I really don’t like Star Trek.