When an emerging infectious disease strikes, such as the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (Mers) circulating in Saudi Arabia, the first wave of infection can whip through a population in just a few weeks.
His tiny sand castles keep being overwhelmed by the waves flooding in from "La Mer," and just one chord -- velvety, with flutter-tonguing flutes -- is left to suggest his finest music.
Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and Debussy's wondrous "La Mer" (inspired in part by Hokusai's "Under the Wave Off Kanagawa") are perhaps the most popular examples of composers aroused by art.
He was fully aware of Debussy's own interest in Japanese art, (the cover of the first edition of La mer, for example, was famously adorned by Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa).
Debussy composed "La Mer" while staring at a copy of Hokusai's woodcut "The Great Wave".
Similarly, in "La Mer" on Thursday, Mr. Nott let evocations of calm seas and playful waves take care of themselves, so that he could present this three-movement, 25-minute score, completed in 1905, as Debussy's new kind of 20th-century symphony.
Since an early appearance in Trainspotting (the movie which spearheaded a 'new wave' of Brit-pics back in the Nineties), Henderson has lent her mer curial presence to a string of high-profile home-grown features such as Shane Meadows's English Western Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, and Michael Winterbottom's edgy Madchester satire 24 Hour Party People.
Alexandra du Bois's yearning "Soleil sur Mer" ("Sun on Sea"), inspired by the barcarolle, had a literal accompaniment from the waves gently rocking the floating concert hall, Bargemusic, in its world premiere on Wednesday night.
When Claude Debussy published his maritime masterpiece, "La Mer," in 1905, he placed on the score's cover a stylized detail from "Under the Wave off Kanagawa," Katsushika Hokusai's woodblock print of apocalyptic waves towering over Mt. Fuji.
In "La Mer," Sir Simon and the players make a listener forget, for once, about musical depictions of the ocean at dawn, playful waves and salty winds.
The wind-and-wave imagery of the "Sea Interludes" is obvious enough, but this is not just an impressionistic canvas in the manner of "La Mer," by Debussy.
