Classical Music | Clarinet Music

Recorded on 03/29/2005, uploaded on 01/08/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Piano            Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was one of the greatest French composers and influenced many other composers in the twentieth century.  As Claude Monet's paintings are identified by the term "impressionism", Debussy's musical style is also best defined by this same term.  He wrote numerous pieces for solo instruments, chamber music, operas, and orchestra scores.  He was at the pinnacle of his career in 1910 when he was appointed a member of the Conseil Supérieur du Conservatoire.  He composed a test piece for clarinet and piano, later entitled Premiere Rhapsodie, for the conservatory's year-end examinations.  Written in a style similar to his most celebrated work "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" (1894), the Premiere Rhapsodie is one of Debussy's dreamiest solo works.   It calls for an astonishing range of technical abilities-constant decelerandos and accelerandos with numerous dynamic changes guiding soft and penetrating melodies.    Seunghee Lee

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.