The Life of Debussy in Six Movements

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Enjoy The Life of Debussy in Six Movements from Zoltán Kocsis in a festive atmosphere in Budapest.

In an unusual undertaking, Zoltán Kocsis presents a six‐part series looking at the life and work of the French composer Claude Debussy, born 150 years ago this year. Rather than traditional concerts, the series takes the form of multimedia performances in which music is blended with poetry, theatre and dance to create a production in which the various branches of the arts are mutually reinforced. As a consequence, the audience will see more than a simple cross‐section of a life’s work, and more than a glance into the creative processes that produced one of the most original bodies of work in music. On this very special night, Paris at the turn of the 20th century will come to life on the Festival Theatre stage. 
The first evening in the series plunges us straight into an meeting of two eras in musical history, where we discover Debussy’s relationship with the Romantic era, and within it to Wagner, and how he subsequently broke away from this style. We will hear a reading from a famous article by Wagner’s admirer Baudelaire, as well as works such as the Wesendonck Lieder, which Wagner conceived as studies for Tristan und Isolde, and the piano trio which Debussy wrote when only 18 years old – dedicated to Nadezhda von Meck, the same patron who supported Tchaikovsky.


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