Remembering Debussy, the man who changed music
The NCH marks the 100th anniversary of Debussy’s death with a special trio of concerts, performed by the outstanding pianist Thérèse Fahy, an acknowledged authority on the composer
Claude Debussy was a radical from the outset. As a student, he continually failed his harmony exams because, like Beethoven a century before him, he refused to accept the absolute authority of the textbook. A brilliant pianist, he would shock his contemporaries by inventing harmonies and chords that effectively reinterpreted tonality – already he was moving towards the creation of musical impressionism.
He was, in short, a revolutionary who pushed classical music into ...
