Six préludes

For the Debussy worshipper that I have been since childhood, touching these marvels that are the Preludes of Claude Debussy was a matter of conscience.

The seductive quartet with flute, with its string trio, allows a professional orchestrator infinite nuances and gradations: four virtuoso instruments, often polyphonic, with numerous iridescences of timbre...

However, we have no model in Debussy himself for such a work, other than his String Quartet (much earlier) and his Sonata for flute, viola and... harp!

Without adding a harp (which has the range of the piano), it is impossible to imagine The Sunken Cathedral or The Terrace of the Moonlight Audiences ... the deep resonances of the piano, so poetic, almost magical, could not be translated by four non-resonant instruments.

So I had to choose few Preludes, not wanting to betray Debussy.

After a very demanding inner listening, and allowing myself, at most, a few brief octaviations of the extreme bass of the piano, I limited myself to six, three in each book:
^1st book:
- Footsteps in the Snow (No. 6)
 - The Interrupted Serenade (No. 9)
 - Minstrels (No. 12)
^2nd book:
- Heathers (no. 5)
 - Tribute to Sir Pickwick PPMPC (No. 9)
 - Canopus (no. 10)

Very quickly, I understood that starting from the piano sound was a mistake; it was better to imagine the Debussy of the 1910s orchestrating these pieces for a large ensemble (like Ibéria or Jeux ), then reducing them for a small orchestra of four instruments.

Hence the use of drums (even on the flute), tremolos, strange doublings to simulate absent timbres, to create illusions of polyphony, so prized by French orchestrators.

I hope I haven't overdone it; I've tried to put into these transcriptions all the imagination - all the improbable sounds - that Debussy himself would have sought.

Alain WlMER