Latvia VII: Ēriks Ešenvalds, again

Well, I've sought out more music by the contemporary Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds in an attempt to gain a broader perspective on his music. I'm very glad I listened -thanks to the promptings of a reader.

Legend of the Walled-in Woman from 2005 is the place to start. The legend is an Albanian one, telling of how two brothers tricked a third into bringing about the death of his wife following a prediction by their mother that their newly-build castle would be safe from invaders if one of them sacrificed a wife. The piece's starting and finishing point is that Albanian folk song and the sounds of its phrases echo over rich drone-like accompaniments at the start. It's hypnotic. The central section gives the lie to any assumption that Ēriks is a simple, easy-to-pigeonhole composer. Here the music begins to move in a way that reminds me rather of Ligeti's Lux aeterna, demonstrating his understanding of avant-garde vocal writing and clustered harmonies, while remaining sumptuously melodically - as if those melodies are echoing in a long and deep memory. The soprano solo (later duet) as we move towards the closing section floats hauntingly. It's a rich and very beautiful piece that packs a considerable emotional punch and must he heard. (For a live performance you might also want to try this).

I was also bowled over by Aizej, lietiņ ('Go Away, Rain!') - a piece for mixed choir, this time based on Latvian folk music.and including an instrumental ensemble which consists of a pair of kokles (Latvian zither-like instruments), reed pipe, accordian and drums. The 'seeing' element is not an incidental one in Go Away, Rain! as Ēriks Ešenvalds encourages movement among the singers as the work reaches its remarkable climax where, drawing on the avant-garde again, a passage of aleatory writing where modal phrases are repeated in an extraordinary polyphony - a joyous, ecstatic clamour - out of which emerges a jubilant-sounding hymn. Before we reach that thrilling point, we've heard the magic solo soprano (in duet with the reed pipe) of the opening and the chorus stirring entry behind her. The accordion launches the delightful second section, a punch-the-air passage with a great tune. Janáček's Glagotic Mass springs to my mind here. And I can think of no higher compliment than that. (For another take on this enchanting piece, please try this).

As you have (hopefully) seen, Ēriks Ešenvalds is a composer capable of moving crowds (in more ways than one). Another remarkable piece of his is Sanākam, Saskanam. A solo singer with violin, mixed choir and ensemble gather together (the choir in potentially infinite numbers!) and so it begins. The process behind it could be said to be minimalist, in that a phrase is set in motion and is repeated with minimum development against a unchallenging harmonic oscillation between two harmonies. The effect, however, is maximalist. Please bear with me as I make a comparison to Ravel's Bolero. The Ravel is one of the most artful masterpieces in music, despite its composer's modesty about it and (some of) the critics' subsequent sniffiness. It is essentially one long crescendo, repeating and repeating but ever subtly changing its colour as it does so. The tension it builds is physical in its impact and when the repetition and the harmonic stasis is suddenly heaved into a new key the effect is electrifying. Ravel's piece then hurtles towards collapse. Something similar is happening with Sanākam, Saskanam - except that there is no catastrophe at the end. Far from it. I won't spoil the surprise though. Please listen for yourself and get caught up in the intoxicating event. The meaning of the title eludes me but its sock-it-to-'em effect doesn't! Joy!!

Another captivating piece by our man is Stars, a gorgeous setting of a poem by the American lyric poet Sara Teasdale. The choir project the readily-enjoyable, deliciously-blurred melodic lines and their richly-packed harmonies (like amplified Poulenc) whilst around them, like the stars in the night sky above us, tuned glasses and Tibetan singing bowls cast the spell of eternity - the effect of the latter, though achieved through ancient instruments, is strange, electronic-sounding even.

The illusion of electronics caught me out with A Drop in the Ocean. I assumed the choir were singing against a backdrop of pre-recorded electronic music. Far from it. That strange, whale-like/Northern Lights-like backdrop is achieved by human beings, whistling and breathing. Magically. The modernist effects, which also include counterpointing speech-like and song-like writing, are employed without a trace of pretentiousness and the music's rich tonality is worthy of Britten. This is warm, melodically appealing and (at times) intensely dramatic music based on the words of Albania's most-beloved daughter (as far as the rest of the world is concerned) Mother Teresa. Bless her.

As I've re-listened (and re-listened, etc), the utter magic (and genius) of  Ēriks's unaccompanied O salutaris hostia has hit me more and more. In another of my (probably) unlikely (but spot on!) comparisons, this is  music of Fauré-like intimacy and sensuousness. We are so attuned to the pessimistic, cynical mood of our age that we (I?) perhaps fail to appreciate that contemporary music can hit the heights that music of the past hit so lastingly. This piece will last. It has very little of the avant-garde about it (hence my comments in that earlier post of mine) but, as we care so little (he says optimistically) about ideological positioning these days, I say "Meh!" to that. This is one of the most beautiful pieces ever written.

Talking of Fauré, whose heart-ingrained Requiem is one of music's great treasures, Ēriks Ešenvalds has composed an In Paradisum that partakes of that piece's - and its equivalent movement's - consoling spirit. A choral piece with what in Baroque music would be term obbligato parts for cello and violin. The violin's part (which. at times, draws on modernist playing techniques) has something of the 'bird of paradise' about it. It's another example of the composer drawing on avant-garde techniques for immediately engaging purposes. Not many can pull that off...

...and for a purely instrumental of that, why not try his Eskiz ('Sketch') for violin and piano?

I suspect I've still only just scratched the surface of Ēriks Ešenvalds's music. Plus he's still younger than me (drat him!) and there's bound to be much more magic to come.

For Couperin

François Couperin (1668-1733) wrote a large number of keyboard pieces (pièces de clavecin) and in doing so ensured the popularity of the "genre piece" in France. Such pieces were intended as descriptive, portrait-like numbers. So a piece like the rondeux Les Amusemens ('Amusements') paints a sound-portrait of people amusing themselves, with more than a suggestion of wistfulness at the transitory nature of human pleasures. Les Tours de Passe-passe ('Sleights of Hand') is intended to convey the idea of a conjuring trick by artfully passing ideas between the hands, after lulling you into thinking that the left-hand is doing nothing particularly interesting. L'âme-en peine ('The Soul in Pain') uses dissonances and drawn-out rhythms to suggest the aching of the tormented soul. The style here is typical of what French music was like at that time, with melodic coherence attaining ever greater importance yet still retaining all those myriad small ornaments which give the French Baroque its distinctive character. 

These three pieces were arranged for chamber orchestra a few years ago by Britain's very own Thomas Adès (b. 1971). His Three Studies from Couperin are more arrangements than actual studies but they are full of the composer's own beguiling ear for orchestral colour and his ability to add little extra touches here and there which add an extra-specialness to the music. Tom's take on Les Amusemens is to bring out its veil of wistfulness with muted strings and brass. Those 'sleights of hand' in Les Tours de passe-passe are re-imagined as ideas being passed cunningly between various instruments. L’Âme-en-peine enhances the ache of its dissonances of the soul by slightly smearing them. The composer appears to love these Couperin pieces and the warmth of his orchestrations seems to be winning a lot of affection from audiences in return.

Thomas Adès's orchestrations of Couperin, despite their 'of-our-timeness', still retain much of the essence of Couperin's originals. Richard Strauss's lush Divertimento Op.68, by way of contrast, keeps the notes of Couperin's originals but floods them with a late-Romantic opulence which, despite the presence of a harpsichord, is a world away from the Baroque and from neo-Classicism, not to mention several galaxies away from the requirements of 'authentic performance' practice. None of which stops it from being a pleasure to hear, albeit not one of its composer's best pieces.  For an immediate point of comparison, please try Strauss's ear-tickling, confectionery take on our friend Le Tours de Passe-passe, one of  the work's most engaging movements. There are eight movements in all, which I'll list below and add links to the originals wherever I can:

1. La Visionnaire

2. Musette de Choisy

3. Le Tic-Toc-Choc, La Lutine

4. Les Fauvétes plaintives

5. La Trophée, L`Anguille, Les jeunes Seigneurs, La Linotte effarouchée

6. Le Tours de Passe-passe

7. Les Ombres errantes

8. Les Brimborions, La Badine

What of that most famous of all tributes to Couperin, Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin? Well, for starters, it's not a tribute to Couperin specifically, being more of a general tribute to the spirit of French Baroque keyboard music, written to commemorate his friends who had been killed during the First World War. The original piano version takes the form of a Baroque keyboard suite - Prelude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata. 

The Fugue and Toccata may not be familiar to you if you only know the familiar orchestral version of the piece. The former is not as bad a piece as some critics might have you believe, though it's not up to the very high standards of the four famous movements - or the fine Toccata. If you do fancy hearing orchestrations of these too, please take a listen then to the more-complete-than-complete performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin from Zoltán Kocsis, who orchestrated both movements to fit in seamlessly with the original Ravel orchestrations. Mr. Kocsis scores the Fugue for winds only, and the Toccata for a larger-than-Ravel orchestra. 

There are so many lovely things in the familiar orchestral version of Le Tombeau de Couperin - the ending of the Prelude with its trills across all the notes of a tonic triad as crossed by a swooshing glissando from the harp; the Forlane's grace, bitter-sweet dissonances and enchanting woodwind solos; the Minuet's gorgeous woodwind-led melody and bagpipe-style trio; and the Rigaudon's brilliance (including some striking trumpet writing) and coquettish flute-led central passage. 

Always a favourite piece, Le Tombeau de Couperin. 

The Waltz IX: La Valse

All the macabre and triste waltzing of the last post might have put you in the mood for a bit of Danish light music. So it's a big "Hej" to "The Strauss of the North", Hans Christian Lumbye. Inspired by hearing old Johann Strauss, Lumbye brought the new Viennese style to Denmark and became immensely popular with Danish audiences as a result. His waltzes are marked by their melodic appeal, their energy and their orchestral colour - all qualities found in his loveable Amélie Waltz, his Memories from Vienna and his Hesperus Waltz. Lumbye's most famous piece, however, isn't a waltz. This is as good a place as any to introduce you to it though (if you don't already know it) so, ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop. This is one of the gems of light music - a depiction of the elegant crowds at a railway station, the wheezing of the train into motion, the train at full speed and its arrival at the next station to the cries of the station staff. Delightful!

Moving westwards (perhaps on a train leaving from Copenhagen), French waltz lovers had their own equivalents of Lumbye and the Strausses, most notably Émile Waldteufel (whose name, in a nice Lisztian twist, means 'Forest devil' in German!). You may never have heard of Waldteufel (which is your loss!) but you will have heard of at least one of his pieces - Les Patineurs ('The Skaters Waltz'), whose opening has more than a little of The Blue Danube about it. Yes, it's not quite in the same league as Johann Strauss II's great waltz, but The Skaters Waltz has all the charm and elegance of French ballet music. Waldteufel usually stuck to the tried-and-tested formula of introduction-waltz sequence-reprise (coda) on the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it principle. The results can be vivacious, as in Tout Paris ('All Paris'), and highly melodious, as in Très Jolie ('Very Pretty'). As a fan of Emmanuel Chabrier and his inspired, glittering orchestral showpiece España, it's fun to hear Waldteufel's transformation of it into his España Waltz. Of course, Waldteufel tames the wildness and originality at the heart of Chabrier's ingenious piece, but it's charming stuff nonetheless.

Chabrier wrote a set of three Valses Romantiques that are among the many semi-hidden delights of French piano (here two piano) music. The composer's music was adored by Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc - and most other French composers of note - and you can, I hope, hear why here. The harmonic ingenuity, the genius for melody, the glamour and elegance, the poetry - all self-recommending qualities - are found throughout this set of waltzes. The third of the pieces is widely regarded as being the most remarkable for its anticipations of composers to come. Just as irresistible is the sparkling Scherzo-Valse from his Pièces pittoresques. Gems, all of them. No survey of the waltz would be complete without them.

Chabrier, incidentally, was another of those composers who began their composing with a waltz. His Op.1 is a 'grand waltz' called Julia. (No link, sadly). Another French composer whose Op.1 was a waltz was George Bizet. His Grand Valse de Concert is a brilliant confection of the kind that often gets dismissed as 'salon music' - and a masterpiece in waltz form it certainly isn't - but it's not a bad start from a young man who was going to go on to write a work of genius like Carmen, is it? Hope that getting you to listen to it straight after hearing the mature magic of Chabrier wasn't too cruel a trick to play on poor Bizet!

Another French master of the stage, Léo Delibes, whose ballets Tchaikovsky said he would have loved to have written, wrote a well-known waltz for his comic ballet Coppélia. I've read a few slight sniffy comments from critics about Coppélia but it's a piece I've long had a very large soft spot for. It has so many good tunes and it's delectably scored. There's nothing but happiness to be had from it - and there's a bonus waltz in the almost-as-well-known Waltz of the Hours. Splendid waltzes, both of them. His other ballet Sylvia has a waltz too - and, guess what, it's a delight too!

Delibes wasn't the first Frenchman to pop a waltz or two in a ballet, unsurprisingly. Adolphe Adam's ground-breaking Giselle (the first ballet to give us the Wilis) had one by the start of the 1840s.

Famous French waltzes come from all direction in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Another is the waltz from Faust by Charles Gounod. This has long had an independent orchestral life, but if you wish to hear in its original form, where Méphistophélès leads Faust and the villagers in a waltz - a Mephisto Waltz! - please feel free to click here.

Listen also to Jacques Offenbach's Gaîté Parisienne, as arranged by Emanuel Rosenthal (yes, it's not really a ballet by Offenbach), and you will hear some more catchy French waltzes that should fill you with feeligns of élan, joie de vivre and bonhomie. Of course, you wan't just hear waltzes. Hmm, what other dances will you hear? There's only one way for you to find out!

The country that first put the waltz in a symphony, thanks to M. Berlioz, was clearly in love with la valse but, being French, they were more than willing to put a little emotionally distance between themselves and the waltz and invest it with a certain nonchalance. Saint-Saëns actually wrote a piece called Valse nonchalante, Op. 110. The Danse Macabre showed that Saint-Saëns could caricature the waltz, and there's surely a hint of underlying irony in his exceptionally brilliant Étude en forme de valse, Op.52/6 - though the irony may be directed at exceptional brilliance itself! (The Belgian violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe wrote a version of the piece for violin and piano, entitled Caprice d'après l'Étude en forme de valse whic brings a Paganini-like flavour to Saint-Saëns's pianistic tour-de-force.)

'Nonchalance' isn't le mot juste to describe the Valse-caprices of Gabriel Fauré. What is? 'Urbanity' perhaps. Fauré turned out four beautiful, sparkling pieces in waltz form - the Valse-caprice No.1, Op.30, Valse-caprice No.2 Op.38, Valse-caprice No.3, Op.59 and Valse-caprice No.4, Op.62. None of them touch the emotional depths of his greatest piano works (the nocturnes and barcarolles especially) but they are exquisite nonetheless. Their virtuosity is feather-light. The earlier pair were favourites of Saint-Saëns and show something of the manner of his Étude en forme de valse - as well as reflecting the style and spirit of Chopin. The later pair are somewhat closer to the true spirit of Fauré, with captivating touches that lift the works well beyond the ordinary - to a place where we also find Kitty-valse from the Dolly Suite.

'Nonchalance' is certainly the word, however, to describe some of the waltzes of Satie: Je te veux and Tendrement, for example, which bring us close to the world of popular music, the cabaret, the 20th Century, or the Waltz of the Mysterious Kiss in the Eye from La Belle Excentrique, which nears the indifference of tone found in those little waltzes of Stravinsky - or in Satie's own Stravinsky-like Valse du chocolat aux amandes. More conventional is the Fantaisie Valse.

Debussy's waltzes carried him from the lovely but emphatically Romantic Valse romantique of 1890 to the more more characteristic and somewhat nonchalant La plus que lente of 1910 (a piece subsequently orchestrated with the exotic addition of the gypsy cimbalom.) Both are minor pieces in the Debussy canon, but neither is to be missed by lovers of the waltz. 

The macabre, madness-afflicted waltz that we encountered in the previous post gets a French outing (in 1903) from a most unexpected source - Jules Massenet. His Valse folle has a Mephistophelian side to it, with plenty of French glitter and an almost Bartok-like bite to a few of its bars. Unlikely, you think? Well, give it a go and see what you think!

Other composers still felt the deepest affection for the waltz. One such was Reynaldo Hahn, whose Premières valses are a loving tribute to the form, seeming to feel most at home in the first half of the 19th Century. There are eleven short movements, the first bearing the Weber-inspired title Invitation A La Valse. There's also a Valse Noble (a nod to Schubert) and a tribute to Chopin ('A L'Ombre Reveuse De Chopin'), thus paying homage to many of the founding fathers of the classical waltz.  "Dear Reynaldo", wrote Proust, "your waltzes achieve the complete coincidence (in the geometric sense of the world) where all expression is stripped away, save that which you want us to savour, art or life.'

Ravel was, of course, making such a nod with his Valses nobles et sentimentales (albeit with many a 20th Century twist), as referred to it my first post on the waltz - where I also promised another piece by the composer that would have been out of place there. That piece is La Valse). The score sets the scene:

"At first the scene is dimmed by a kind of swirling mist through which one discerns, vaguely and intermittently, the waltzing couples. Little by little the vapours begin to disperse, and the illumination grows brighter, revealing an immense ballroom filled with dancers. The blaze of the chandeliers comes to full splendour. An Imperial Ball about 1855."

There are three continuous sections. The first, The Birth of the Waltz, opens to miasmic rumblings. Out of this quiet chaos emerges the rhythm of the waltz. A tune rises from the bassoon eventually reaching the strings and the oboe, with the brass stressing the rhythm with ever greater oomph. We then come to The Waltz Itself. Here the violins then the oboe give us to the big waltz tune, with the percussion flecking its process. Other instruments take the lead as the waltz passes into through various moods, from serenity to passion. The speed intensifies and the waltz begins to become harsh. Finally comes The Apotheosis of the Waltz, where the waltz is belted out in a great blaze of orchestral colour and becomes ever more hedonistic and hallucinatory, being engulfed in great swirls of sound with baying brass prominent. The violence grows ever more intense and the piece reaches a fever pitch of brutality, with fierce dissonances raging. The waltz hurtles forward nightmarishly and crescendos into wildness before collapsing fiercely. Many see La Valse as a damning indictment of the pre-World War One culture that brought about the catastrophe of that war - a world that collapsed at the end of the war, just as Ravel's Valse collapsed. La Valse is, thus, as much a history of the whole of the world of Imperial Vienna as it is of the waltz itself.

The waltz had, indeed, reached its apotheosis. There are very few significant French (classical) waltzes to come from the years after La Valse. 

The Waltz I: Early Days

With the coming of the New Year, we found ourselves once again watching the famous New Year's Day concert from Vienna's Musikverein. It's one of those things we do as a family, year in and year out (whether the rest of the family wants to or not!). It marks the coming of another year just as surely as Norman Lebrecht's annual denunciation of the very same concert (for its Nazi past and the Vienna PO's reluctance to involve women performers). What would a New Year be without any of those things? I shudder to think! 

This year's conductor was Franz Welser-Möst, returning for a second bite of the cherry. He gave us the odd piece by Papa Strauss, plus plenty of Johann the Younger and Josef, a couple of 'the others' (Lanner and Hellmesburger) and a piece by each of the big birthday boys of 2013 - Wagner and Verdi. 

It set me thinking about the dance form most famously associated with old Vienna - the waltz. What have the great composers made of it? 

The dance developed throughout the closing decades of the 18th Century, rising from rural origins and then moving into the cities. It seems to have grown out of such three-four time country dances as the Ländler and other such Deutsche ('German Dances'). As they migrated into the ballroom, chasing out the old courtly minuet in the process, so they gradually evolved into the waltz. The 1790s was the decade when named waltzes began to appear, but the Ländler & Co. held out for some time and the waltz wasn't really to sweep all before it until the 1820s when Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss set up an orchestra and became the first two great Viennese waltz composers - at first working together then  parting company and becoming highly competitive rivals. 

The 1820s also saw some of the greatest names of music dipping a toe into the world of the waltz. Actually, the year was 1819 when Carl Maria von Weber lifted the waltz into the world of art music with his magnificent piano piece, Invitation to the Dance - though the piece was only published in 1824. The work (which has also became popular in the delightful orchestration by Berlioz) begins by evoking the invitation by a gentleman to a lady, an introductory passage that was to become the template for many of the slow introductions of the great waltz sequences to come. What follows is a waltz sequence - a chain of waltzes, with the main waltz returning at its culmination. There's then a little coda where the gentleman leads the lady back to her seat. The piece is not just a masterpiece in its own right, it was also vastly influential. Lanner was so taken by it that he drew on its title, themes and - above all - structure for several of his own pieces. Indeed, it is a template that will be instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the music of the greatest of all Viennese waltz composers, Johann Strauss the Younger. 

To get a flavour of what Joseph Lanner did with the waltz sequence, why not try his Styrian Dances (Steyrische-Tänze), Op. 165? What do you make of the tune at 1.27 though? Does it ring a bell with you? Well, if you know Stravinsky's Petrushka it most certainly will. You'll recognise it as the tune of his waltz The Ballerina & the Moor (beginning at 3.27). The next tune that appears in Petrushka is a tune from another Lanner waltz - his best-known work, Die Schönbrunner, Op.200. (The Lanner tune begins at 0.30 and Stravinsky's take on it, as linked to above, appears at 4.05). It's funny what turns up in Petrushka!

As Lanner's music was achieving lift-off, a surprising name enters the the world of the waltz - Beethoven. Did you know Beethoven wrote waltzes? Well, there are very few of them and they are certainly to be classed among the chippings from the master's workbench. However, the Waltz in E flat major, WoO84 (1824) is an undoubted winner, with a charming main tune and a beautifully imagined trio section, and I'm sure you'll be as pleasantly surprised by it as I was.

At around the same time a less surprising name also entered the field - Schubert. He wrote a good number of waltzes, including two outstanding collections - the Valses nobles, D969 and the Valses sentimentales, D779, dating respectively from 1823 and 1827 (it seems). Both sets were published in the composer's lifetime and achieved popularity. They may not be his deepest thoughts but they are quite delightful. Getting to know them has rather opened my eyes to their influence on Schumann, several of whose dance-inspired pieces include waltzes that have a strong affinity - in shape and sound - with those of his hero Schubert. See if you can hear what I mean in, say, Papillons, Op.2 (1831) or Carnaval, Op.9.

The titles of Schubert's two sets of waltzes were famously taken up by Maurice Ravel. His Valses nobles et sentimentales borrows more than those titles however, being a chain of waltzes directly inspired by the example of Schubert's pieces - though they sound very, very different from anything Schubert ever wrote. As was his way, Ravel soon orchestrated his piano original and removed it even further from the soundworld of Franz Schubert. The work is a masterpiece in either form. (Another great tribute to the waltz from Ravel was to come, but I'm getting ahead of myself - and that piece needs placing much later in the story for reasons that will become clear).

A Tale of Three Sarabandes

Debussy's Pour le piano inhabits an attractive half-way house between his early works and his later fully 'impressionist' works. It has two fast, toccata-like movements (Prelude and...er..Toccata) framing an elegant, atmospheric slow movement, Sarabande, which was written earlier than the other movements and which inhabits a modal world, doubtless inspired by Satie, which was about to blossom into the opera Pelleas et Melisande. The Sarabande was later orchestrated by Ravel.

Comparing the Debussy original with the colour print by Ravel, which brings the magic out best?

Well, the original has a wonderfully intimate feel to it, the sense of a composer communing with his own thoughts, savouring the sounds he is conjuring from the keys of the piano. In the main section, with all its chaste chords and modal harmonies, there is a sense of the archaic, the ritual, the mystical, of (to allude to a later Debussy piece) Greek priestesses, perhaps, dancing around statues of Apollo. The Ravel orchestration, in contrast, is almost sensationalist, bringing us bright, fleshy colours, banishing any sense of the mystical. This sensational element is symbolised by the cymbal-crash at the climax of the piece. Ravel is clearly savouring the sounds he is conjuring from the orchestra and wants us to savour them too (which I for one am more than prepared to do). The Debussy feels introverted, the Ravel extrovert. I like the way the vaguely oriental touches in the original, following the main climax, are brought out even more by Ravel though. The composer of Mother Goose could hardly fail to score well here (in both senses of the word!) As you might have guessed, I prefer the Debussy to the Ravel/Debussy and think that Ravel missed quite a bit of the spirit of the original. That said, the orchestral version is great fun and it's a happy world where we've got both!

Interestingly, the original Sarabande we know from Pour le piano isn't really the original at all - it's a revision of a movement from an earlier Debussy work, the Images oubliées. Even if you only know the familiar version  quite well you won't fail to notice, if you click on the above link, that, though must of the original 'original' was transcribed unaltered, there are some startling differences between the two versions - and they all boil down to just a handful of changed notes in a few chords - one note making the world of difference each time. All the changes made for the Pour le piano version are changes for the better, I'd say. (Do you agree?) They all simplify the particular harmony in the light of its context.