While Debussy's "La Mer" (symphonic poem in three sections) would appear to be programmatic (music describing something) he felt otherwise about the work.....it was (paraphrasing Hanslick) "Music for Music's sake".

While the string quartet as a genre had been around for over two hundred years it had been falling "out of favor" with composers, especially in France, until Debussy wrote his "String Quartet".

The Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts series returns to the "Evening Cncert" with performances recorded in the 2014 Festival season.

March 26 of 2015 was Maestro Boulez's 90th birthday, and to celebrate that the folks at the Philharmonic put together this retrospective of the Maestro's work with the Philharmonic.

Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas selected the pieces for this concert and the subsequent CD release, plus Yuja Wang joins the SFS for Prokofiev's 1st Piano Concerto