I was browsing the latest issue of Fanfare magazine. In a review of the
Sony reissue of the Bernstein/NY La Mer the reviewer noted that Bernstein
"omits the optional trumpet fanfares in part III." Now I know the parts
referred to. Ashkenazy uses them in his Cleveland recording, and Munch
did too in his early sixties recording in Boston. But in but few others
do -- Van Beinum, Szell, Boulez, Maazel.
Does anyone know the background of these parts? Were they in the original
version and then removed, or vice versa? Were they in fact by Debussy? For
they don't even seem appropriate. They sound spliced in after the fact and
more or less fudged to fit the bars they are counterpoint to. Yet the
record reviewers seem compelled to comment when they are absent.
Mark Seeley