Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just received the 2017 schedule for the Park Avenue Armory in New York, and very much looking forward to this in October. The vast Armory space, hard to tame, might be just the thing for this piece, depending on how they configure it.

According to the description, they will do the piece TWICE each night, so the audience can move to a different spot for the second performance -- an interesting idea.

http://www.armoryonpark.org/programs_events/detail/repons

Boulez: Répons

Ensemble intercontemporain
Matthias Pintscher, Conductor
Samuel Favre, Gilles Durot, Percussion
Dmitri Vassilakis, Hidéki Nagano, Piano
Frédérique Cambreling, Harp
Luigi Gaggero, Cymbalum
Andrew Gerzso, IRCAM Computer Music Design
Gilbert Nouno,IRCAM Computer Music Production
Jérémie Henrot,IRCAM Computer Engineer
Pierre Audi, mise-en-space
Urs Schönebaum, lighting designer

--Bruce

I REALLY REALLY wish I could see this! Matthias Pintscher is one of the best Boulez interpreters today and EIC have uploaded a video of him conducting it....probably even Better than Boulez's own. Unfortunately this is in such a difficult time of the year for me to go overseas....but I totally would if I had the money

[bhodges]

I listened to that last night, the complexity of the textures is amazing 

Yes, delicious!

I REALLY REALLY wish I could see this! Matthias Pintscher is one of the best Boulez interpreters today and EIC have uploaded a video of him conducting it....probably even Better than Boulez's own. Unfortunately this is in such a difficult time of the year for me to go overseas....but I totally would if I had the money

The recording of Pintscher and the EIC is quite, quite good -- even though you don't get the spatial effects. But still, the sound quality is terrific, and you're right, it might be better than the one Boulez conducted.

--Bruce

[(poco) Sforzando]

I REALLY REALLY wish I could see this! Matthias Pintscher is one of the best Boulez interpreters today and EIC have uploaded a video of him conducting it....probably even Better than Boulez's own. Unfortunately this is in such a difficult time of the year for me to go overseas....but I totally would if I had the money

If your plans change, we'd love to have you. With a nice dinner and tour of the city on me.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

If your plans change, we'd love to have you. With a nice dinner and tour of the city on me.

Very kind of you, but unfortunately it will be a very busy month for me at university anyway with exams and things happening around then

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just came across a youtube upload of what appears to be an excerpt of a lecture given by Bernstein and also a performance conducted by Bernstein of some Boulez

https://www.youtube.com/v/hKkOAH8vFJc

[Mahlerian]

Just came across a youtube upload of what appears to be an excerpt of a lecture given by Bernstein and also a performance conducted by Bernstein of some Boulez

https://www.youtube.com/v/hKkOAH8vFJc

Apparently the only time Bernstein conducted music by the man who would replace him.  Still, it's more than Boulez ever did for Bernstein's music, I'm sure!

I think the focus on complexity is overstated, when really the sonic result is the point, for Boulez as for (almost) everyone else, Structures Ia aside.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Apparently the only time Bernstein conducted music by the man who would replace him.  Still, it's more than Boulez ever did for Bernstein's music, I'm sure!

I think the focus on complexity is overstated, when really the sonic result is the point, for Boulez as for (almost) everyone else, Structures Ia aside.

I agree. The association of composition with mathematics would bewilder a great many concert-goers who'd otherwise be content with a well considered rendition of beautiful music. What is more interesting are the associations with specific musical styles Bernstein mentions.

[ritter]

This recent release of "Boulez sans Boulez" didn't get much publicity (I myself just found out about it today, and promptly ordered it, naturellement):


Good to have a new recording of Éclat (even if it is sans Multiples  )....

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

This recent release of "Boulez sans Boulez" didn't get much publicity (I myself just found out about it today, and promptly ordered it, naturellement):


Good to have a new recording of Éclat (even if it is sans Multiples  )....

Looks really cool, but I don't know if I really need any more of these works in particular.....perhaps down the track if there are more recordings of Multiples I'd consider getting some of those!

[ritter]

Cross-posted from the WAYLT thread :

Dérive 2 from this CD that has just been released:

[asin]B01MZAVQGM[/asin]

Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra give a stunning rendition of this intricate and Damascene score. The textures are perfectly clear, and the pacing feels so natural. Very, very good! A performance (live from the 2012 Proms) to do the composer proud.

Each time I listen to it, I enjoy this work more, and am increasingly convinced it's the best of  Boulez's Spätstil , and one of the high points of his entire output.

The same conductor and ensemble gave a (long) Boulez / Ravel concert that included both Dérives a couple of years ago here in Madrid, which I stupidly missed...

[ritter]

Another cross-post, this time from the "Unpublished Compositions" thread, as this might be more useful here:

AFAIK, there's some works by Pierre Boulez that have never been published. I'm not referring to the withdrawn works (Poliphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir, the apparently fragementary choral work Oubli signal lapidé . the early Trois Psalmodies--many of which were recorded in their time), but rather to the incidental music he wrote for Jean-Louis Barrault: L'Orestie and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. There's also the 5-movement version of the Third piano sonata (also recorded), or the original of Le soleil des eaux (as a radio play). I presume the manuscripts of all this are in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, so perhaps some day these pieces will see the light of day...

He also claimed to have done work on other Notations and an expansion of Eclat/Multiples, I believe.  Who knows how much of that got down onto paper.

Indeed...and Claude Samuel in his liner notes to the Boulez Complete Works set on DG (issued in 2013) mentions that 13 minutes (IIRC) of Dérive 3 were already composed at the time...

Wasn't there an opera too?? I remember reading something about (the extraordinary absurdist play) Waiting for Godot, if that's correct. That would've been one of my favorite operas! (like Varese's lost L'Astronome )

Yep, there was a rumour about that (never confirmed, but never fully denied by the composer either AFAIK).

Boulez envisaged three operatic projects throughout his career, all of them aborted. I actually had the chance to ask him directly about this in an online conversation with the composer hosted by the now defunct "Yellow Lounge" on the DG website (this was in the early 2000s, i.e. before the Godot rumours started circulating).

His first project was to have Jean Genet as librettist (Boulez always expressed his admiration for Genet's art, particularly for the way Les paravents is constructed form a dramatic point of view). Genet died of throat cancer before any real progress could be made on the text, so that was that. Next up was Heiner Müller (who was going to work on Oresteia--a subject matter the composer had already dealt with in his incidental music for J.-L. Barrault's staging of Aeschylus's trilogy in the mid-50s). Müller too died of throat cancer, so Boulez was naturally a bit apprehensive about approachng someone else.

The En attendant Godot project seems to have been just that, a rumour, but there had even been talk of a premiere at la Scala in Milan (when that opera house was run by Stéphane Lissner).  But perhaps something surfaces in the papers the composer left behind....

I think making the incidental music to L'Orestie available would be interesting, as perhaps this is as close as we could get to what a Boulez opera would have been like. Parts of the Barrault staging were available on video on the Radio France website during the celebrations of the composer's 90th birthday (I don't know if they are still accessible). I did read somewhere (it might have been in J.-L. Barrault's memoirs), though, that the scores were lost when the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris (home at the time of the Renaud-Barrault company)  was stormed by students during the May 1968 "thing". 

[Karl Henning]

Of course, to the Loyal Opposition, the En attendant Godot rumor was a win/win:  if true, we would have a Boulez opera on a Theatre of the Absurd classic;  if false, it's a deliciously wry jest.

[ritter]

Of course, to the Loyal Opposition, the En attendant Godot rumor was a win/win:  if true, we would have a Boulez opera on a Theatre of the Absurd classic;  if false, it's a deliciously wry jest.

Indeed. ..and I think the good old Maître was actually playing that game vis-à-vis le cher public. ... 

[Karl Henning]

Would not surprise me!

[nathanb]

Anyone ever read anything from Boulez himself about the works he withdrew? Obviously I can imagine him being self-critical, but I always love listening to Poésie Pour Pouvoir and wonder if he has ever offered public insight regarding such things.

[Mahlerian]

Anyone ever read anything from Boulez himself about the works he withdrew? Obviously I can imagine him being self-critical, but I always love listening to Poésie Pour Pouvoir and wonder if he has ever offered public insight regarding such things.

In the case of that work, I think he was dissatisfied with the medium of tape itself.  I seem to recall he considered a revision of it.  In the era of Repons and ...explosant fixe..., Boulez was quite critical of the fact that tape doesn't give performers any leeway and forces them to play to something like a click track, not allowing for any kind of interpretation that would alter the temporal relationship between the score and the tape.

[James]

I think he was dissatisfied with the medium of tape itself. 

Boulez seemed to be a very insecure composer. We all know he had a big mouth. If he claimed to be dissatisfied, it really ment that his own abilities to produce anything remarkable within it were lacking and the results were less than stellar. And he was seeing what an esteemed colleague of his was getting done within the medium and thinking out of slight jealously .. damn, I could have never come close to that and i tried, must withdraw ..

[snyprrr]

Boulez seemed to be a very insecure composer. We all know he had a big mouth. If he claimed to be dissatisfied, it really ment that his own abilities to produce anything remarkable within it were lacking and the results were less than stellar. And he was seeing what an esteemed colleague of his was getting done within the medium and thinking out of slight jealously .. damn, I could have never come close to that and i tried, must withdraw ..

"Le tape c'est merde!"

[Karl Henning]

"Le tape c'est merde!"

Good insight!

[ritter]

More literature on/by Pierre Boulez coming to the market.

This book (of haphazard distribution, it seems) includes 30 years worth of interviews, collected by Bruno Serrou. It was released past february.



I've ordered it directly from the publishing house. Let's see what it contains.