Highly regarded as he was, Claude Debussy experienced some financial difficulties in the last few years of his life. He reluctantly appeared as a conductor, a role that did not quite fit his shyness and caused him a lot of tension. He had to accept commissions that he did not really care for, and rejected projects that were close to his heart. In 1912, Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, commissioned music fromDebussy for a new ballet, the scenario of which depicts three young lovers dancing in a tennis court until an airplane crashes. It is said that Debussy judged the topic “Idiotic”, and only accepted the commission after Diaghilev had doubled the fee. The ballet, in one scene, is set in an artificially-lit park in the evening. A tennis ball falls on stage. A young man in tennis clothes enters the stage, followed by two young women. The two women fancy the lad and dance with him in turns. When one girl dances, the other one feels jealous, and vice versa. In the end they dance and all three embrace. The idyllic scene is abruptly interrupted when a second tennis ball falls on stage, and all three run away. The initial idea of an airplane crash didn’t make it to the last version of the ballet. The music is completely modern, daring and original. In their correspondence, Stravinsky suggested to Debussy to name the Ballet “The Park”, but the French composer preferred the name “Jeux” - Games. The music is indeed full of games of rhythm, form and orchestration. There are no proper melodies in the traditional sense of the word, but short, mostly wave-like motives and many orchestral effects. Debussy writes here for a very large orchestra, but never uses it in a bombastic manner. His use of the orchestra is analogous to a painter's use of a palette, choosing wisely the exact hue for each and every moment in the piece. The work opens with a slow and mysterious introduction followed by a fast tempo in dance-like character. The music follows the lovers’ games of love and jealousy, until the ecstatic climax and its collapse. In a concert performance, as the one played tonight, there are no dancers on stage. Thus, we are free to imagine the story ourselves, make up other plots, or simply enjoy the colorful music with no need to attach it to any extra-musical narrative. The ballet’s premiere took place in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 15, 1913. Two weeks later, the same dance group performed the premiere of The Rite of Spring in the same Parisian theatre. Stravinsky’s ballet caused such a riot that Jeux was simply forgotten. Even concert performances later that year did not spark interest in the work. However, Jeux experienced a renaissance a few decades later, thanks to the new generation of European composers. The French composer Olivier Messiaen, the “Godfather” of the Avant-garde composers, taught the work in his analysis class. One of his students there was Pierre Boulez, who regarded the work as a revolutionary masterpiece, a radical artistic achievement ahead of its time. He conducted it many times and recorded it, and thus gave it its well-deserved place in the repertoire. Oded Shnei-Dor CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) J E U X ca. 20 mins.
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