Claude Debussy’s Entre Quatre-Z-Yeux

According to Claude Debussy, "Music begins where the words end." It builds a bridge between reality and unreality. In his Preludes, he left the music open to interpretation by the performer and the listener, wishing that "they be played only privately" and "among four eyes," (entre quatre-z-yeux). Daniel Barenboim accompanies on the piano in this recording. Debussy sets dance movements to music, evoking three bacchantes sculpted on a column in the Louvre Museum. "La fille aux cheveux de lin" derives froma poem by Leconte de Lisle, while "La Cath+drale engloutie" tells the story of the sunken cathedral of Ys, which rises again from the waters, becomes visible and sinks once more - a tone painting of cathedral-like chords. Claude Debussy endeavored to revolutionize tone color. He wanted to journey down new roads remote from harmonic "rules." "Music is mysterious mathematics whose elements partake in the eternal. It lives in the movement of water, in the play of the waves in the changing winds."