Debussy & Matisse: Creating New Colors

Program & Artists

Debussy Images for orchestra
Artwork by Henri Matisse and others

Leon Botstein conductor

Tickets

3-Concert series Up to 20% off the full price

Part of TŌN’s Sight & Sound series

In the popular series Sight & Sound, conductor and music historian Leon Botstein explores the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. A discussion is accompanied by on-screen artworks and musical excerpts performed by The Orchestra Now, followed by a full performance and audience Q&A.

Henri Matisse helped to revolutionize the visual arts in the first decades of the 20th century with daring and energetic experiments in a radiant, technicolor style of art that changed the course of French painting. In the same era, his compatriot Claude Debussy was rejecting classical German musical tradition, developing his own style of harmony and orchestral coloring that would strongly influence a wide range of composers for years to come. His vividly expressive Images for orchestra, which evoke English, Spanish, and French cultures, exemplify the composer’s explorations in color and texture.

Concert Details

Estimated duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

>Read the concert program

Discussion, on-screen artworks, and musical excerpts
Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now

Intermission
20 min

Claude Debussy Images for orchestra
37 min
Listen

Q&A with the audience

All timings are approximate.

Sample the Music

Debussy Images for orchestra

Image: Henri Matisse (French, Le Cateau-Cambrésis 1869–1954 Nice). Nasturtiums with the Painting “Dance” I (detail), 1912. Oil on canvas, 75 1/2 × 45 3/8 in. (191.8 × 115.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982 (1984.433.16). © 2023 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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