The day in Istanbul begins in watercolours. Peach fingers uncurling, painting away the grey and blue of the night before.
The first fishermen can be heard calling to each other. From the many hills diving into the sea, the call to prayer emerges.
The sounds are muffled, muted by the houses jostling for space, stacked one on top of each other, right down to the water’s edge.
By mid-morning it has become a burst of acrylic colours. On the bridge at Galata, they throw mackerel off the griddle and into an open roll so fast, it’s still sizzling in your hands. The salt-wind whips, heavy with the iron tang of fish glistening on the quay-side. And all the while, the gulls and market traders wage war for decibel supremacy.
Two exhausted tugs strain against their bindings, hauling in a dirty tanker from Russia. A Chinese freighter, with its patchwork of coloured crates, drifts past a warship, alert and prowling low in the water. A battered little fishing vessel from Greece works busily across the current. And darting between them all, a schooner, all dazzling white sails and polished bronze fittings, barely touches the top of each wave.
Other than these pleasure yachts, there’s little to love in all the chipped paint and smeared chimneys. But what these ships lack in beauty, they make up for in untold stories, endless possibilities.
The distant homes, exotic destinations.
The adventurers casting off, bright-eyed and naive.
The travellers returning home, weary yet joyful, caked in the dust of foreign lands.
I’m reminded of John Masefield’s famous poem:
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine…
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores…
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days…
And of Debussy’s La Mer.
At first, all is pre-dawn haze – just a rumble of timpani and bass. From across the bay, a bell, still half-asleep, begins to toll.
In the woodwinds the waters begin to wake, calling up darting currents then vanishing into the breaking day.
Watery strings lap endlessly, one on top of the other. The breeze comes flying over them – laughing flutes scooping up sprays of harp.
Then gliding, slicing, crawling come vessels of every description.
What strange cargoes weigh down those mysterious, muted horns?
Where are those celli and bassoons headed, dancing between the crests with such glee?
And what is the sad tale of that lone oboe, returning melancholy and empty-handed?
The call of the sea ‘is a wild call and a clear call’ says Masefield in another of his Salt Water Ballads. A call of possibility and release. Of journeys yet to be made, of stories waiting to be written.
In the notes of La Mer, you can answer that call.
You can head out beyond the breakers, feel that vast freedom without ever leaving dry land.
So cast off, dream on – there are no rights answers. Just the stories which only your imagination can tell.
The Recording
For a rare few, a lifetime of exploring music leads to an almost superhuman simplicity in performance – a few essential truths. You can see this phenomenon first-hand, in the videos the late Claudio Abbado and Lucerne Festival Orchestra made together.
Debussy hated his music being labelled ‘impressionistic’. To him, the term implied vagueness, ambiguity. He prided himself on the precision of his scores.
And yet could there be a better term for La Mer? After all, is it not an impression of the sea? The ocean’s essence bottled as sound?
Here lies the art and the difficulty of Debussy.
On the one hand, it must be surgically precise. And yet on the other, it must be free, lighter than air, near-improvised.
In this recording, Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra find the balance. Moments of clarity, where everything melts away to reveal hidden details. Explosions of sound where every voice is jumbled joyously together.
It is precisely balanced like the atoms of a complex molecule, yet full of the thrill of living and playing. It is Debussy for the mind and the soul.
So have fun. They certainly are.
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