(59 min; 1999; English and with subtitles)
Director: Paul Smaczny

Préludes for Piano, Book One by Claude Debussy. Performance by Daniel Barenboim. An explanation is given on these Préludes by Daniel Barenboim as well as readings of Debussy's own writings.

According to Claude Debussy, "Music begins where the words end." It builds a bridge between reality and unreality. In his Preludes, he left the music open to interpretation by the performer and the listener, wishing that "they be played only privately" and "among four eyes," (entre quatre-z-yeux). Debussy sets dance movements to music, evoking three bacchantes sculpted on a column in the Louvre Museum. "La fille aux cheveux de lin" derives from a poem by Leconte de Lisle, while "La Cathedrale engloutie" tells the story of the sunken cathedral of Ys, which rises again from the waters, becomes visible and sinks once more - a tone painting of cathedral-like chords. Claude Debussy endeavoured to revolutionize tone colour. He wanted to journey down new roads remote from harmonic "rules." "Music is mysterious mathematics whose elements partake in the eternal. It lives in the movement of water, in the play of the waves in the changing winds."