Seascapes and Visions | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Debussy’s one regret about La mer was that it wasn’t quite gorgeous enough. ‘I have slandered the sea’, he wrote. ‘Today it is beautiful enough to defy all comparisons’, and like the orchestral dreamscape of his Prélude, it’s one of those pieces that seems to be conjured out of the colours and perfumes of nature itself. For our dynamic young guest conductor Klaus Mäkelä – making his long-awaited London debut – Debussy unlocks a whole evening of French music at its most sensuous, its most passionate and its most ravishingly subtle – whether the spiritual intensity of Messiaen’s early masterpiece, or the elegantly-worn ardour of Saint-Saëns’s first cello concerto, with Truls Mørk as soloist.