New book on Debussy reviewed:
" He came out of nothing, and the eruption of his genius is a complete mystery. There was no musical tradition in his very ordinary family. Within two years of starting to play the piano he was admitted to the Conservatoire; and two years after that, aged 12, he was being given prizes for his performance of a Chopin concerto. Almost from the start, his own music was exquisitely formed, and even the earliest of the songs and piano pieces give a lot of pleasure. "
. . .
" Walsh’s biography deliberately focuses on the music rather than the life. Debussy was perhaps not a very likeable person, so this approach serves to remind us what we most admire about him. Mary Garden, the first Mélisande, said that he was a ‘very strange’ man; and it does sometimes appear as if he had no real sympathy for, or interest in, other people."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/debussy-the-musical-genius-who-erupted-out-of-nowhere/
" He came out of nothing, and the eruption of his genius is a complete mystery. There was no musical tradition in his very ordinary family. Within two years of starting to play the piano he was admitted to the Conservatoire; and two years after that, aged 12, he was being given prizes for his performance of a Chopin concerto. Almost from the start, his own music was exquisitely formed, and even the earliest of the songs and piano pieces give a lot of pleasure. "
. . .
" Walsh’s biography deliberately focuses on the music rather than the life. Debussy was perhaps not a very likeable person, so this approach serves to remind us what we most admire about him. Mary Garden, the first Mélisande, said that he was a ‘very strange’ man; and it does sometimes appear as if he had no real sympathy for, or interest in, other people."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/debussy-the-musical-genius-who-erupted-out-of-nowhere/