I've always wondered this. Did Debussy want Claire de Lune played by taking liberties with the time?
He was inspired by the impressionist painters, and, as I suspected, wants the dappled random points of light in impressionist works to infuse this piece with a random, joyful, sparkling of notes in the upper register. And, the bass is more subtle than most people play it. We are so constrained with the rigidity of many classical composers that people don't feel comfortable talking liberties with the time signature when playing this piece. Wonderful.
At 0:34, and again at 0:54, the melody arrives at a significant bass note, and most pianists emphasize that note like the "drop" in a pop song. He artfully makes that note quite subtle, again emphasizing the random playful upper notes.
What follows after 0:54 is usually played quite regularly and rhythmically, but he has this lovely, random cascading saltatory progression through the chords, like he's pausing to smell the roses when there's a particularly nice chord. Beautiful.
And here's a lovely rendition by Victor Borge:
And, of course, have to include that classic Victor Borge hilarious bit about spoken punctuation:
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