La Mer - Debussy

The record pictured above shows typically garish sleeve art from RCA’s Victrola reissue series of the early 1970s. Maybe the execs at RCA thought the new art looked psychedelic or something. The music on the disc was recorded in 1956 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch. I recently picked this LP up to solve a minor mystery I’ve had going for a few years now, but the composition the LP was titled after has been a longstanding favorite, at least since my high school music appreciation class turned me onto it:  La Mer by Claude Debussy.

In high school I took an AP Music History course that exposed me to all sorts of music following the chronological development of Western Music from at least Gregorian Chant to the 20th Century. It was great to hear how music became more complex over time, but the big change for me was getting to the so-called “Impressionist” composers – particularly Debussy. It was like – widescreen technicolor in sound (pretty psychedelic, actually)!

So, I ran out and grabbed a CD copy of La Mer conducted by Pierre Boulez (from the brown-sleeve Great Performances series – you know those things!). I was happy to see La Mer being conducted by Boulez – a name I recognized as having connections to Frank Zappa. There was another connection to Zappa on that CD, but I’ll bypass that story for now. Anyway, aside from some Edgard Varese and Conlon Nancarrow (also Zappa-recommended stuff) – this was the only classical music disc in my collection for years. I listened to it enough times to know the piece well enough and it is in fact a great performance (excuse the pun).

Mucho years later – I got roped into the SACD craze. Super Audio CDs had the advantage of offering higher resolution sound plus occasional multi-channel possibilities (surround sound when available). I had been dreaming about hearing music in discrete surround for years – so I got into it, bought some rock and jazz titles – then, slowly…..the industry stopped making the damn things. Except for – classical. Hmmm.

A whole series of RCA Living Stereo sacds had been produced – quite a few of which featured three-channel mixes (three track tape being the standard when recording for stereo discs in those days). Folks were raving about them on online forums – and, best of all – they were cheap (relatively) and still in print. Among the first of my purchases of this series – a disc including La Mer conducted by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony in 1956. Cool!

Except when I played the disc – something about the sound of that performance alone (there were others on the disc) really put me off. It sounded like something had gone awry during the tape transfer/mastering process – on that piece alone it was like someone shoved pillows in front of my speakers – BLAST! I complained about it on an online forum – nobody paid much mind to my observation, but I was certain something was not right.

Listening to the LP of the same performance – although there are some laid-back characteristics about the recording in general, the $2 LP wipes the floor with the sacd in terms of dynamic sound quality. And I can finally hear another quality performance of this great piece of music in its intended fidelity. La Mer is “The Ocean” in French. Debussy was French. It’s colorful, dramatic music, but not sentimental. Mysterious, but not syrupy. Still one of my favorite pieces of music period and I can HIGHLY recommend this LP, even with the nasty 70s reissue cover. My vinyl copy is not perfect, but the sound is surprisingly dynamic for a RCA dynaflex – maybe the original shaded dog label from the 50s beats it? Who knows? But my $2 vinyl LP kicks the sacd’s butt up and down the Parisian Thoroughfare indeed.

The Final Word:  La Mer by Munch on RCA vinyl rocks! Dig it!