BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Welcome to our series, What the Fact?!
Throughout 2018, we’re teaming up with talent at the Australian National Academy of Music to bring you informed answers to real questions and topics about your music career.
Ever wondered why you feel performance anxiety? What the deal is with tuning to 440Hz – or not? How to lead an orchestra? We’re here to tell you all about it.
This week, we ask one of Australia’s great pianists: Why do we love Debussy so much?!
This is Ian Munro (not Debussy. Obviously). Ian has performed in more than 30 countries – not to mention having played more than 60 piano concerti with all of Australia’s major orchestras. He’s recorded for labels such as ABC Classics, Naxos, Hyperion, and Tall Poppies; and not only has he become famous for performing works by Ravel, Mozart, and Kats-Chernin among others – but he is also in high demand as a composer.
This month, Ian will perform alongside ANAM musicians in Debussy100 – the school’s year-long celebration of all things Claude.
Hacking our undying love for Debussy.
Ian, tell us about your relationship with the beautiful music of Debussy.
I well remember first being introduced to Debussy’s first Arabesque at high school by my teacher Dee Pénicaut, with her bangles and effervescence, which helped to suggest a style of music previously unknown to me: that of the decorative and aromatic French.
Debussy, of course, is much more than decorative and evocative, as subsequent discoveries among the marvellous Préludes, Images, and Etudes showed me.
Gradually, I came to the conclusion that, although he died only 18 years into it, he was probably the most important composer of the 20th Century; a harmonic thinker of rare genius.
Tell us a bit about why you think Debussy so appeals to the ears – why we do, so often, describe his music as a thing of beauty.
It is true that Debussy loved beauty, which is unsurprising, given his 19th Century upbringing and long apprenticeship absorbing French opera, Wagner and music hall, among other genres. He might have lived to experience the later artistic reactions to the ugliness of the Great War, but his personal response can only be guessed at, although we know that the war utterly drained him of creative joy.
The ways he developed of synthesizing disparate modes and styles of music is unique to him and is a technical marvel. A little like Mozart and Bach, from afar the aural effect is often urbane and smooth; a close inspection reveals quite remarkable incongruities and surprising juxtapositions.
You are a pianist (and a fine one, at that!) – why is Debussy so well-suited to your instrument?
Debussy – like Ravel – loved, knew, and played the piano. They both revered masters of the past and especially studied Chopin, perhaps the composer-pianist who most liberated the full beauty and richness of the instruments. One is always aware that Debussy only ever demanded of the instrument what it could do, and was especially interested in its resonances and evocative qualities.
Having said that, his orchestral imagination and mastery both informed his later piano writing, and vice versa.
So how was Debussy received during his own era?
Debussy was a bit of a late starter in the sense that, although he was certainly writing in his teens and 20s, it was not until his 30s that he hit his stride and achieved fame in France, quickly followed by recognition in England and elsewhere.
His music was pretty much universally enjoyed, although the ‘impressionist’ badge was somewhat misleading and undervalued his real worth.
A harsh and snide critic himself (under the pseudonym ‘Monsieur Croche’), he was not well-liked as a person by many who judged him harshly in his turn.
What would you say has been the biggest impact Debussy has made on Western music?
We live in an interesting musical period, retreating as we are from spurious concepts of modernity, which were based largely on chasing the tail of the ‘new’. Now that we recognise that the music from the past century that we want to hear again was gifted to us by – generally speaking – continuing tonalists, Debussy will only be seen as more important than ever. Like Bartòk, Janaček, Britten, Shostakovich and others, it’s the imaginative ability with materials that counts.
Why would you say Debussy’s music is still important for us to consider now – exactly 100 years after his death?
Artists who succeed in creating whole imaginative worlds, in which we want to inhabit and rediscover over and again, are the ones we most love and admire. Debussy did this in spades.
Why are you looking forward to performing his music with the students of ANAM?
I have been a visitor to ANAM since its first embodiment, and am always inspired by younger and older colleagues, especially when we share music I love; we love. This time, I’m particularly thrilled to be given the chance to present The Songs of Bilitis, a fascinating and rarely performed work that sheds light on Debussy’s more personal musical reasons for being.
Any words of advice for those looking to embark on their own journey of Debussy, as listeners or performers?
Only: be ready to be delighted and perhaps surprised. He does not reveal his secrets all at once, and remains intriguing after every note has been heard.
See Ian Munro perform Debussy in Images [Book 1] with ANAM Musicians at 7.30pm June 29 in the South Melbourne Town Hall. If you’d like to join them for study, ANAM applications are open for the 2019 Professional Performance Program, and you can visit the website to find out more.
Check back in soon for our next What the Fact?! with professionals in the music industry.
