Program Note
Reprintable only with permission from the author. Ravel String Quartet Igor Stravinsky famously said, “Good composers borrow…but great ones steal.” He might have been speaking of his one-time friend and associate Maurice Ravel. Ravel’s youthful String Quartet, written in 1902, owes an immense and inarguable debt to Claude Debussy’s Quartet from nine years earlier, both […]
Program Note
Claude-Achille Debussy was no academic. Fed up with the rigors of conservatory training, he longed to compose in a style that was distinctly French, as opposed to the more Germanic intellectual and aesthetic ideals of his teachers. He was very much involved with the artistic currents of his time in his native country, especially Symbolism in poetry and in the visual arts.