Debussy’s “La Mer” is a masterpiece of suggestion and subtlety in its rich depiction of the ocean. Several authors have claimed that “La Mer” sounds like nothing before it. As a specialist in French Impressionism, the British pianist and writer Paul…

In the eyes of his contemporaries, Johannes Brahms’s violin concerto was so different from everything that had come before that, after the premiere, a critic stated that it wasn’t a concerto, but a “symphony with violin obligato”. In an interview…