Sometimes a life in music can involve more than a bit of archaeology ­– not unearthing centuries-old fossils (or uncovering the Ark Of The Covenant), to be sure, but searching in libraries can be just as exciting for a musician. The ‘excavation’ that has now led to a first-ever recording of the full, original version plus related works of the remarkable musical anthology Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy happened for me nearly 30 years ago. That’s when I, a young doctoral music student who had travelled to the USA from my native Israel, stood in front of a forgotten and dusty shelf in a far-flung corner of the New York Public Library. And there it was.

While researching for my doctorate in the subject of multi-composer musical anthologies I had come upon a reference to a remarkable project – in 1920, the French magazine La Revue musicale had issued a call for composers to contribute short pieces for a cycle to honour the late Claude Debussy, to be published in a special supplement with their December 1920 edition. And everyone, more or less, had answered the call, the very cream of composers connected with France ­– an extraordinary roll-call, ranging from Ravel to Bartók to Stravinsky to Satie. How had I never heard of this? How come it was not more widely, which is to say properly, published?

Determined to solve this mystery, I had tracked down physical archives of the magazine to New York, to this library, and now, here I was. In a far corner I found the clustered issues, my eyes alighting on the tantalising words ­– La Revue musicale. I eagerly flipped through the issues of the distant days of 1920: January 1920, February 1920, March … and here it was. The December issue. Inside, at its centre, as my research had so teasingly promised, a faded grey booklet with a specially commissioned etching by Raoul Dufy on its cover: a special issue in memory of Debussy on the second anniversary of his death – I could hardly believe it. I opened the pages and there inside, my trembling fingers turned the pages of 10 compositions by names thrillingly familiar: Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók, Falla, Satie, Dukas, Schmitt, Malipiero, Roussel, Goosens. I had in my hands, finally, Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy – ‘The Tomb of Claude Debussy’.

Very quickly I also discovered the reason why this piece is not performed and did not become part of the concert repertory. It wasn’t that it wasn’t an important piece of history, for it constitutes a unique cross-section of musical Paris just as one generation of composers was handing the baton to another. It wasn’t that it didn’t work musically – quite the opposite in fact. No, it is because Le Tombeau is, to all practical purposes, well-nigh unperformable. Having not been given any precise criteria to write to, the composers had let their imaginations run free, and composed for a dizzying variety of instrumentations. And what musical institution could easily muster solo piano, soprano singer, guitar, violin and cello, let alone an orchestra ­to include 23 wind players? (A quick clarification on that ‘orchestra’: Stravinsky’s piece was taken from the longer and orchestral Symphonies Of Wind Instruments, on which he was simultaneously working, but although what he gave to the magazine was a piano arrangement, I have always believed that it only works in its finished orchestral vision and that this is what Stravinsky had in mind).

With the excitement of a young idealist I promised myself that this rare treasure would and must be shared with the entire music world. And, indeed, in the following year I included a piano-only version of the cycle in my graduation recital in New York and in 1993 convinced Radio Switzerland in Zurich to broadcast it. There were some good reviews, but a piano-only version is not the real thing, and after that broadcast we all (both myself and ‘the entire music world’) went on with our lives.

But the years have passed and the industry has changed. The new emphasis from recording companies on forgotten and rare repertoire provides opportunities. I witnessed how in the early 2000s growing portions of the Tombeau cycle were being recorded in different settings, but in spite of these fine recordings the work as a whole remained in the shadows.

Yet still my great dream – to assemble a large-enough group of musicians to join me, so that we could all present for the first time, the full scope of the Tombeau project – eluded me. It didn’t help that I was ambitious – I did not mean to record ‘just’ the 10 original compositions included in the cycle with the orchestra for the Stravinsky, but also the masterworks to which it gave birth: Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the Duo-Sonata by Ravel for violin and cello. Both were later developed from the short pieces their composers contributed to Le Tombeau into stand-alone memorial works.

But now, finally, the stars have aligned. As the Director of the leading higher-education institution for music in Israel, the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, jointly run by the Israel Philharmonic and Tel Aviv University, I am surrounded by great young talents and the distinguished artists who mentor them. I realised that there was no better project to unite the school’s many and disparate forces. And I knew that the year 2020, the cycle’s centennial, had to be the time to do it, to record the Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy and its related works, with the original instrumentations.

With the generous help of Naxos, this dream now comes true – with the digital release issued 100 years to the very month since that special issue of La Revue musicale, and the physical release to follow early next year. I have finally reached the end of that road of discovery upon which I set out in 1992 – and now others can now discover the full scale of its beauties.

Tomer Lev is a pianist, and the Director of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music

To buy the digital release of Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy, visit https://naxos.lnk.to/8573935UK The physical release will be available in 2021