Tag Archives: debussy

Victor Borge the famous comedian plays Debussy’s Clair de Lune

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Victor Borge (1909-2000)

Victor Borge was a highly accomplished pianist and musical comedian who was born in Denmark. Early on in his career he had to leave Europe because of the Nazis and WWII. Victor wanted to become a professional concert pianist, but decided that he would be more successful doing a comedy act using classical music. He came to the US and developed his own unique style of comedy. Victor Borge had his own TV show called “Comedy in Music” which was one of the longest running and most successful shows in television history. He told many different types of jokes. A few of those jokes involved music and classical music composers.

He rarely played a piece of piano music all the way through without stopping or cracking a joke. Here is a rare performance of Victor Borge playing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune from start to finish. You can hear that he played very musically. Enjoy.

Debussy: Nocturne (1892)

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Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer and pianist.

Debussy was an important figure in music history who broke away from the popular methods of musical composition in the 19th century.  Debussy developed his own original concept of harmony and musical structure.  According to Debussy, each piece of music was its own sound world and not something that should be bound by strict rules.

Here is a recording of a Nocturne for piano by Debussy.

If you like the recording of this piece you can buy it on eMusic or iTunes.  You can also buy the complete cd which contains other piano works by Debussy including this piece.