Notes and conclusions about the experience of creating and performing my arrangement: 
 

By creating this arrangement, I gained a stronger narrative line for the piece, which I now can’t disassociate from the sounds I was looking for and that makes sense to me. It changed my view and interpretation of the structure of the piece, making me think of the atmosphere of every moment. The narrative line is now a set of atmospheres that support my interpretation. 

It also changed my approach in touch. I was seeing the piece too much though the eyes of a pianist, and this piece requires a different kind of touch that generates a different kind of sound. A more percussive touch, for example, using fingers as mallets for dotted notes, in order to get the right articulation but without ruining the build-up of the phrase, especially if it is under a big expressive slur. 

In regards to imagery, I decided to create a narrative around the mythical creature of Puck (interestingly enough, taken out of Debussy’s own imagery) and its interactions with the light of the moon and how it reflected in the temple that was, as the title suggests. I came to the conclusion that the arrangement not only made it possible for me to translate this narrative and the imagery that comes from it, but it also made me see new images, like the association of the vibraphones playing with bows with waving beams of moonlight reflecting on a mystical temple. This led me to yet another conclusion. I always thought of using imagery to evoke sound, but in a lot of cases, the generated sound evoked even stronger images, making me believe that imagery and sound are an unending source of inspiration for creating and performing music. 

As for the more technical points, I was able to experience and confirm empirically one of the topics that I approached in the first chapter: when we try to replicate a sound, we look for the gesture we think is responsible for making it. When I was trying to melt my piano playing with the atmospheres created by the percussion instruments, I found the sound I wanted by searching for the gesture that would allow me to play it. This happened when colouring the big vertical chords, in the articulation of “Puck’s” melody, as I called it, and generally throughout the piece. 

I was also able to experience and understand how the percussionists reacted to my playing. In the first rehearsal with them I started by explaining my goal of using their instruments (with their huge amount of potential and possibilities) as a way of expanding the piano’s resonance, and we started rehearsing it before they could hear my solo approach of the piece. The moment I realised this, I decided to play the original version for them, and the consequences were very interesting. Immediately after I finished playing, we tried out the arrangement again and I felt already a huge difference in the ambience, and bigger awareness and sensibility in the approach of the percussionists. This too is a proof of the power of imagery, for the best way I found to explain how I wanted the character of the piece to be was through sound, and by showing how I colour the atmospheres of that music in the original version. 

From expanding the sound universe of the piano with percussion instruments, I created lots of different landscapes and environments that evoke, not only the images that Debussy was looking for, but the ones that I found by experimenting with sound, imagery and gesture.