Debussy meets Chopin. “Such natures as, when they come in contact, at once lay hold of each other, and mutually affect one another, we speak of as having an affinity for the other”, wrote Goethe in Elective Affinities, in an attempt to apply the principles that govern chemical reactions to the world of emotions. Were it possible to ask them, it is most certain that Fryderyk Chopin and Claude Debussy would have gladly conceded to this project bursting with affinities and complicities.

Two seekers of the absolute who, through an art distilled to its quintessence, were able to erase all trails of their work and of their extraordinary compositional technique. The connections between them are as numerous as they are subtle, never obvious yet tremendously profound: Javier Perianes’s accomplishment is to retrieve the artistic thread that links these two geniuses rising over their respective centuries.

HMC902164
November 2013