Emotional involvement in the music of Debussy came to me late – my first tear dropped only in my mid-30s. It’s not that I didn’t like his music before – of course not – I was fascinated by it, but I was not emotionally concerned. It was not like something you are intrigued by, which then little by little becomes a real passion – I was struck as if by lightning, overwhelmed by an unbearable emotion. It has never happened to me with any other composer, so far. From that moment on (this situation has passed, after almost 20 years), but for at least five years, the main thing I could feel from Debussy’s music was the emotion – which was strange because that was what I was missing before.

Debussy is very difficult to grasp. It doesn’t fit in big halls. Paradoxically, this situation where people are hearing music alone with their headphones, completely disconnected from the outside world, for Debussy it works very well. I was thinking of that when I made my recording of the complete works, because I thought if people are listening very closely to the source of the sound, there is a kind of...