It begins around 2 pm.
The dust-baked lorries on the road to Monti Cristi – hand-rolled cigars, cotton plants, coffee beans, rice sacks – slow to a crawl. The fields of plantains and goats lining the road start to shimmer and glisten. And in the doorways of colourful little cabins clustered by the tarmac, old men in crisp white shirts and women in their faded cotton blouses, slip into dreamless sleep.
The thick air collects over the saline pools, sucking up the water, leaving piles of parched white gold behind. To the north, where the flat-topped peak of El Morro juts into the Atlantic, the crabs make their escape, scuttling into the cool water.
As the dogs slink under the palms and verandas, as the tarantulas creep into their holes to wait for nightfall, as the trees sag with thick vines and silent bats, a thick perfume is released into the air.
Flowers and fruit, sweet and sickly,
Musty earth and damp tarmac,
Rotting leaves, clawing, honeyed,
So heavy, so paralysing, that even the clock hands can no longer move.
Only the colonial water tower, painfully white against blue, faces up to the heat, glaring at the sky above.
Oily grey clouds start to bulge over the horizon, becoming angry black. And as the darkness gathers, everything begins to glow.
The wide leaves that cover the mountains become a wall of luminous green, lit from within. The slivers of darkness between them sink deeper, slits of impenetrable black.
Monsoon witchcraft.
In that close, sticky silence, with breath held, waiting for the first lighting bolt to strike and the thunder to roar and the rain to pour down like a vertical river, the first seductive notes of Debussy’s Prelude a L’Apres Midi d’un Faun tremble in the air.
Lone flute, foliage-draped and heat smothered,
Hovering strings, velvet rich, yet mirage thin.
Veiled horns, source unknown, author inscrutable,
Brimming with life or sickly sweet decay?
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again. *
* The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2, Caliban to Stefano
The Recording
There is only one recording of this piece for me, only one that captures the wanton pleasure, the sensuality of this music.
As performers, we are taught to be ‘re-creators’ of other’s music. Guardians of their genius and their integrity. We have a duty to respect their work, to conjure it up as faithfully as we can, so we are told.
And yet, when we follow this calling slavishly, when we refuse to mix a little of ourselves into their work, we end up creating little more than museum exhibits. And poor ones at that.
After all, how could reproducing a series of dots on a page ever truly reflect the intentions of the extraordinary artists that wrote them?
To bring the music back to life, to realise each piece with all the vividness that the composer heard, we have to pour our spirit into the pages as well. Perhaps it will be faster or slower, louder or quieter than was intended. But we will be living it, and that, surely, is what they really wanted.
So whilst it may be wild and indulgent, whilst it adds freely to the directions on the page and whilst it wallows in it shamelessly, this recording – Georges Pretre with Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart – is as faithful as can be. For each note is lived, and with all the passion and energy that Debussy surely lived it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h54rp91b0-0
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