Claude Debussy
La Cathedrale Engloutie

LA RECENSIONE

A piece by Debussy in the soundtrack of "Escape from New York"? Well, yes... in its electronic version, of course, but equally interesting. However, I prefer the original. You know when a sort of mental hologram forms in your brain? That's the effect of listening to this piece, and without the use of drugs...

La Cathedrale is the 10th piece of the first book of two collections of preludes composed by Claude Debussy between 1909 and 1913, with the musical thought dedicated to Chopin's preludes which in turn were inspired by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier preludes. In short... a rich and substantial lineage of inspiration.

Water, for Debussy, has always been an important element of inspiration. He wrote immortal pages precisely inspired by water (Ondine, La mer, Le jet d’eau from Baudelaire's Five Poems, Pagodes and Jardin sous la pluie from Estampes, Reflects dans l’eau from Images... and many others).

In La Cathedrale, there is a sort of epic liquidity, of hidden drama, of legendary evocation of the Celtic city of Ys, which legend says resurfaced from the ocean for the last time before its final eternal oblivion. In short, there are all the elements to indulge in listening where the music manages, as I mentioned at the beginning, to evoke images, sensations, almost like a mental hologram that represents in dreamlike figures what the music conveys to us.

Just with a piano, without electronic alchemy, only with the power of a composition that is dreamy and dramatic at the same time.

To be listened to without distractions.